What does any of this have to do with MSU? Both football teams could disappear and it wouldn't really bother me.
If one or more other teams cheated, they should have the book thrown at them as well, to the extent that they broke the rules. But this is about what UM did. They most definitely cheated, and their continued attempts to shift the narrative away from admitting the wrongdoing and just taking their medicine is downright sad.
Let me preface this by saying I don't much care about either team in the grand scheme of things. This is a devil's advocate position because of the amount of people who are employing flawed logic in arriving at conclusions. It's not that Michigan
shouldn't be punished, it's just a matter of when and how and who gets to determine it.
What does it have to do with MSU? Nothing specifically, it was a recent and similar issue regarding the immediate suspensions that just happened to work as an example. School A wants due process, School B wants immediate punishment. New scenario arises, School A wants immediate punishment, School B wants due process. It's pathetic on both sides. The bylaws and rules, including those for punishment for violation, exist for a reason. The schools pressuring the Big Ten for immediate punishment without a complete investigation are effectively asking for the Big Ten to
cheat the process to punish Michigan for
cheating. Surely you can understand how this is extremely contradictory and to be okay with it is a bad thing, or else you'd see no reason for law enforcement to
not execute anyone accused of a crime without first completing a full investigation.
Honestly, it's probably more influential in the grand scheme of things. A governing body that will cast aside it's own contractual agreements out of convenience because other people got their feelings hurt (more likely they see this as an opportunity to get a shot in) is a Pandora's Box that none of the schools should be comfortable with. A cheating scandal can be remedied with suspensions, fines, scholarship limits, bowl bans, vacated wins, etc. A big, litigious nightmare that results in the potential undermining of the reputation of the biggest athletic conference in college sports? Seems like a bigger deal, but what do I know... nothing has ever happened to major organizations, FIFA was never a real thing, Arthur Andersen didn't fail due to corruption and greed, etc.
Regarding Michigan, everything that they've put forth doesn't explicitly say that they admit it, but they also don't issue a defense claim that nothing happened. They are playing the game of plausible deniability in my eyes. They aren't saying that Stalions didn't cheat, but they are acting as if they didn't know the extent to which he was and that they remedied the situation. Should it be punishable? Probably. Michigan seems to be just aggressively taking the position of "you can't punish me because I didn't know and I fixed it when I learned more." Which shouldn't be a legitimate excuse, but when you marry that with the Big Ten's apparent overreach, now you get this pile of shit.
I think all three sides will come out of this in the wrong. Big Ten and Michigan likely in a very public fashion and the other schools will probably fly under the radar, but whether people want to admit it or not, it's not a good look to do what they've done to this point.