Colin Cowherd, Deion Sanders defend Michigan football against NCAA

Michigan football has plenty of detractors in the NCAA investigation story, but Colin Cowherd and Deion Sanders defended the Wolverines on Tuesday.

It’s been interesting to watch the NCAA continue to wage a PR war against Michigan football in the supposed “sign-stealing” investigation.

That right there should tell you all you need to know. If things were so bad, and there was so much evidence, why isn’t the NCAA letting the investigation play out, instead of leaking select parts to the media to make Michigan football look as bad as possible?

I’m not saying rules weren’t broken, although if you look at the NCAA by-laws, you could make the case that Connor Stalions didn’t technically break any rules, at least from what we know right now.

There were more reports about him potentially buying tickets to SEC games. That doesn’t change the story though — more of the same accusation.

While some talking heads and rivals are acting like it’s the biggest scandal in NCAA history, Colin Cowherd has compared it to Deflatgate — in other words — it’s a nothing burger.

"“It’s not changing the games, the scores or the outcomes,” Cowherd noted. “You know who’s good this year — the same teams that were good in the ’70s, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Alabama, Oklahoma. It’s the same teams that were good 40 and 50 years ago. When you go from zero to 60, when you go from, ‘I didn’t know a rule existed,’ to, ‘I’m totally outraged by it.’ What was really [the source of] outrage with deflategate was it was Tom and nobody could beat Tom. And if you go back and look at the numbers with Tom, they were better post-deflategate. He was better after he was ‘nabbed.’ It was total nonsense and a total non-story, but it was Tom. And this is about Harbaugh, who’s completely distanced himself from even Ohio State — and that’s not easy to do.”"

Deion Sanders defends Michigan football too

A lot of college football coaches have scoffed at the idea that this had a huge impact on games. For one, everyone steals signs. That’s a well-known fact in college football and if you aren’t mixing things up, that’s on you.

Michigan has had its signs stolen before. That’s just part of the game. But as Sanders said, “You can have someone’s who game plan. They can mail it to you. You still gotta stop it.”

The point is, even if you have an idea of what the other team is going to do, football isn’t that simple. You still have to execute. There is still traditional scouting and all the other components that go into predicting what an opponent will do — it’s not just about signals.

Regardless, this whole thing is frustrating because it wasn’t necessary.