The Michigan Wolverines won the national championship game against the Washington Huskies on Monday. It wasn’t without controversy. The Wolverines have been under investigation for sign-stealing since mid-October and putting an asterisk on this championship. NCAA president Charlie Baker isn’t one of those people. He said in a statement that he felt Michigan won the title “fair and square.”
NCAA President Legitimizes Michigan Wolverines Title
Baker thinks that bringing the allegations to light made everyone adjust and showed who the best team actually was.
“I don’t regret doing it because sitting on that information, given the comprehensiveness of it, I think we would have put everyone including Michigan in an awful place. At the end of the day, no one believes at this point that Michigan didn’t win the national title fair and square. So I think we did the right thing.”
Baker’s point was that if they had sat on the information, it would have been fraudulent. Because they brought it to light, the last month of the season didn’t have any shenanigans going on meaning Michigan did win those games fair and square.
Fallout From The Investigation
Baker did hint at the possibility of further punishment. “We do have a series of discussions going on with the infractions folks about whether or not we can’t do something to speed up the pace of our investigations,” Baker said. “Certainly in a case like this, we’d like to be able to move a lot more quickly.” These types of things move slowly and the NCAA is trying to make sure their investigation is complete before handing out punishment. It is unclear at this point exactly what that would be especially with Jim Harbaugh being rumored to be leaving for the NFL.
The Michigan Wolverines had a season to remember regardless of all the controversy. They have lots of questions to answer in the offseason. The NCAA punishment could change in 2024 and beyond but it looks like we will have to wait a little longer to see if there is any further punishment.
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