Chris Partridge issues statement on his termination from Michigan football

Chris Partridge, who was fired from the Michigan football program over a week ago, issued a statement denying that he destroyed evidence. 

One thing I can say with certainty is that the reporting surrounding Michigan football and alleged in-person scouting has been irresponsible.

Whether it’s the Washington Post leaving out the identity of the Private Firm or its methods when collecting information that was shared with the Post or the NCAA, it’s been a witch hunt led by Ohio State, to try and force out Jim Harbaugh, where speculation and rumor have ruled — not facts or evidence.

The evidence doesn’t back that up (about the Buckeyes yet), but when Michigan regent Jordan Acker is tweeting about Third Day Investigations, a firm suspected of having ties to Ryan Day, and of looking into Michigan football, you can sense there is something to it.

Yet, people have taken the NCAA’s, “no-known connection” between the firm and Ryan Day, as gospel, which doesn’t mean what people think it means.

At any rate, while we wait for that to get investigated, which could take quite a while, Chris Partridge offered some clarity about his termination in a statement he released on social media.

Partridge attacked the reporting on the issue and said that he didn’t destroy any evidence and had no knowledge of any alleged in-person scouting by Connor Stalions.

The linebackers coach was fired, as his statement said, for “a failure to abide by the University directive not to discuss an ongoing NCAA investigation with anyone associated with the Michigan football program.”

That’s much different than destroying evidence, which reporters like Pete Thamel and Yahoo Sports tried to suggest — using unnamed sources (likely on the NCAA side of things) that were (shockingly) not accurate.

People need to get a grip and have some professional standards, especially since they have ignored the fact that Ohio State colluded with a number of Big Ten programs to advance scout and steal signs from Michigan — even though the AP reported it.

A former Illinois assistant coach even told The Wolverine that Illinois had Michigan’s signs prior to the 2022 game.

You can choose to believe they got them “legally” but there should be an investigation to see if any rules were broken, since Michigan doing in-person scouting was the “greatest scandal in the history of the Big Ten Conference”, according to Tony whatever his name is — which doesn’t matter because he won’t be commissioner that long.

The statement by Partridge is important because it once again reinforces that nobody on the staff knew what Stalions was doing. Furthermore, there is no evidence to support that they did.

And if you needed any evidence that the signs didn’t matter anyway, all you needed to do was watch Michigan football beat Penn State, Maryland, and Ohio State — two top-10 teams in three weeks — without their head coach, to prove the signs never did matter.

It was all just a witch hunt. One that continues to this day.