A month after Florida defeated Ohio State 41-14 in the 2007 BCS National Championship Game, then-Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany penned a bizarre open letter defending his conference against criticism that it was recruiting falling behind.
“I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line,” he wrote, “but there is an appropriate balance when combining academics and athletics.”
His accusatory arrogance drew no small amount of ridicule (and admitted he retired 13 years later), but it accurately reflected the Big Ten’s long-held, haughty self-image. After all, this is a league that adopted the names “Legends” and “Leaders” when it first split into divisions, and with each expansion (with increasing frequency) it ensures that each new member is granted AAU status.
But as it finds itself at the center of the most exciting and absurd college football scandal in years, the once-regal Big Ten is becoming something much less appealing. Two-time defending conference champion Michigan is accused by other league members of an elaborate espionage scheme, and new commissioner Tony Petitti appears to be on the verge of taking action against head coach Jim Harbaugh and/or his program. Meanwhile, two reports surfaced Monday that a former Big Ten employee alerted Michigan to documents containing the Wolverines’ 2022 signals that he said were shared with him by other league schools. If true, some of the same rival coaches who implored Petitti to drop the hammer on Michigan reportedly had staff members conspiring among themselves to steal the Wolverines’ signals themselves.
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The blame, the chatter, the chatter – it looks bad for everyone involved. In fact, they almost swapped roles with the Big Ten’s longtime nemesis, the SEC, which for years was notorious for schools turning each other in and voicing their displeasure to the media, at least until Delany’s old enemy, the late Mike Slive ushered in a different era.
Most infamously, at SEC media days in 2004, Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer appeared on speakerphone to avoid a subpoena in a crazy libel lawsuit involving his role in helping the NCAA topple Alabama went into a recruiting scandal. It was an absurd moment, entirely in keeping with the SEC at the time, where at one point more than half of the league’s members were either serving NCAA probation or were actively under NCAA investigation.
The Big Ten is currently experiencing the 2023 version of this episode.
A mysterious investigative firm has reportedly dug up and turned over the NCAA evidence documenting former Michigan employee Connor Stalions’ scheme. That led to certain Michigan defenders spreading the conspiracy theory in the media that Ohio State coach Ryan Day had a family connection to the investigator, which the NCAA and Big Ten have apparently investigated and debunked.
Delany, who dominated the league for three decades, would have tolerated none of it. There were certainly disagreements and jealousies among the various members under his watch, but rarely if ever did these squabbles come into the open. The SEC’s Slive ruled with a similar iron fist. When then-33-year-old hotshot Lane Kiffin got the Tennessee job in 2009 and publicly accused Florida star Urban Meyer of cheating and insulting several others, Slive read to him and his colleagues at a closed-door coaching meeting in Destin that he and his colleagues committed the riot in the spring. The noise immediately left the room with him.
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Petitti, the former television and Major League Baseball executive, just started his current job in May and is already facing a defining moment that could determine whether he is the Big Ten’s next Delany or the next Kevin Warren becomes.
Whether you’re someone who believes Michigan deserves any wrath that might come its way or you’re a Michigan fan with recent experience in due process, from the outside it looks like the coaches the league tell its commissioner what to do. If so, it could be about ushering in the new man after watching the overwhelmed Warren clumsily handle the decision of whether or when to play the 2020 season in his first year in office.
Although Petitti is new to university administration, he has experience with sign-stealing scandals. He was working under MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred when the league investigated and punished the Houston Astros for an eerily similar situation in 2019. As in college football, signal theft is commonplace in baseball, but the Astros, as much as Michigan claims to be, have crossed the line smartly to the point of violating the rules. Other schools may have teamed up to decipher Michigan’s signals, but so far none are known to have penetrated a MAC school’s secondary area to spy on a rival.
But enforcing Michigan’s discipline may prove to be an easier step than fighting all the resulting fires. The school is reportedly prepared to take legal action if Petitti tries to suspend Harbaugh. One of the Big Ten’s two flagship universities seeking an injunction against the conference would represent an irreversibly damaging breach.
And it’s something the school wouldn’t have dared to do against Delany.
Instead of holding conference calls that require Harbaugh or athletic director Warde Manuel to awkwardly sign off so their colleagues can jump on it, Petitti may need to get everyone in a room in Chicago or Indianapolis and send the kind of message Slive did in Destin.
It’s still eight months before the conference expands to an unwieldy 18 schools in four time zones. Petitti absolutely needs to get the current 14 players under control before he invites four more sets of coaches to show their own fingers.
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(Photo of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)