As with Stewart Mandel’s writing I highlight the mocking sarcasm—FULLY DESERVED—employed here by Forde, another esteemed sports pencil. Official and unofficial Michigan have been made laughingstocks. The reputation of the UNIVERSITY is darkly clouded. The Michigan Man is now the michigan man.

Michigan Has Gotten Curiously Quiet on Its Sign-Stealing Scandal

• PAT FORDE
• 2 HOURS AGO

• The Michigan Outrage Meter seems to no longer be registering.

  Last Friday it was all restraining order and rush-to-judgment this and due-process that and unfairrrrrrrr. The next day it was tears from the interim coach. On Sunday came a dramatic social media post from the school president about facing “challenges and adversity.” …

  Today? No outrage. After receiving new information, the only audible sounds from Ann Arbor are the circling of wagons. …

  …

  I’m not hearing any calls for Michigan to secede from the Big Ten today.

  …

   The lingering question was this: Where did Stalions, making $55,000 per year, get the funding to bankroll such an ambitious plan?

It’s good to have a rich uncle.

(A Michigan booster named Tim Smith has denied to Sports Illustrated and Yahoo Sports that he is “Uncle T.” Smith told Yahoo he was terminated from his membership in the Champions Circle collective, which raises funds for NIL opportunities for Michigan athletes. Smith said he is a “fall guy.”)🙄

If covering college athletics for three decades has taught me anything, it’s this: When a scandal is uncovered, it’s almost never the work of a rogue employee acting in a complete vacuum. …

[That never made sense.]

In the case of Stalions, an astounding number of people wished fervently for it to be true. 

…

Michigan still has a chance to get what it really wants out of this, which is a national championship…

[Yep. And that is the gravest injustice to the “integrity of competition”.]

…

…recent events have forced the school and its backers to abandon the righteous indignation stance. It was obnoxious before and no longer tenable now. A legal challenge has been abandoned, an assistant coach has been fired and Uncle T is now entered into Connor Stalions lore alongside a Central Michigan coaching disguise and the “Michigan Manifesto.”None of those are good things.