Just when you think the Michigan football-Connor Stalions-alleged sign-stealing scandal can’t get any more ridiculously absurd, college football fans are here to remind you it absolutely can and will.
Take yesterday’s response to the Big Ten from Jim Harbaugh’s lawyer Tom Mars.
The letter is 10 pages long and full of all the legal theories you’d expect. But there is no official document college fans won’t peruse in its entirety and those who did discovered quite the coincidence: One of the arguments made by Mars was previously posted, word-for-word, on a Wolverines message board two days earlier from someone claiming to be a lawyer and Michigan alum.
Take a look for yourself.
Parts of this letter from Jim Harbaugh’s lawyers appear to have been lifted almost verbatim from a fan’s blog post, without credit of course. https://t.co/BjhRkEBL7G https://t.co/pt1jN2aSXD pic.twitter.com/hXnFK7h5wl
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 9, 2023
From the MGoBlog post:
That provision is unambiguous and lists no exceptions. There is no rule in the conference handbook that would allow the Commissioner to bypass the NCAA (and the Big Ten’s Compliance and Reinstatement Subcommittee) because the Commissioner feels peer-pressured to act quickly.
And from the Mars letter:
Rule 32.2.2(C) is unambiguous and has no exceptions. There is no rule in the Big Ten Handbook that would allow the Commissioner to bypass the NCAA (and the Big Ten’s Compliance and Reinstatement Subcommittee) only because the Commissioner feels pressured to act quickly. Nor is there any precedent in the history of the Big Ten for imposing penalties without a reasonable investigation first being completed of the incident in question.
Huh. Weird! Surely college fans will just let this go.
Just kidding, of course they didn’t. The theories began running wild almost immediately over the similarities. My personal favorite is that Mars was testing out his talking points on MGoBlog before officially responding to the Big Ten.
Of course, there’s no evidence any of that is true. It just didn’t stop the conspiracy theories from taking off.