The Michigan Wolverines are entering the 2024 season coming off a national championship campaign.
But heading into the new season, the Wolverines are looking much different. Former head coach Jim Harbaugh decided to take his talents to the NFL and take over as the Chargers’ head coach. Now the keys have been turned over to Sherrone Moore, who served as the offensive coordinator under Harbaugh,
While Harbaugh leaving will be hard enough to overcome in a season where Ohio State looks like they have one of the best rosters in the NFL, Moore and the Michigan Wolverines are entering 2024 with an added distraction..
Michigan football head coach Sherrone Moore is reportedly facing a Level II NCAA violation for allegedly deleting a thread of text messages amidst the investigation into Connor Stalions’ impermissible scouting. But whatever punishment Moore might face, it’s not apparently likely to be very steep.
That is, at least, how ESPN’s Pete Thamel sees things as he sifts through the tea leaves in the wake of the draft Notice of Allegations being reported on. Facing just a Level II violation, Thamel doesn’t expect the punishment for Moore himself to be much more than a short suspension, if even that.
Still, the Michigan Wolverines don’t need any extra distractions in the first year without Harbaugh, no matter how stiff the penalty ends up being.
“As a Level II, I would think ultimately that gets distilled to a short suspension of some kind,” Thamel said on the ESPN College GameDay podcast. “It could be no suspension, it could be a short suspension. I don’t think we’re looking at anything — it’s hard. If you look at what happened in the college basketball scandal, it’s hard to have a significant — you’ve really got to break some rules to do that.”
Specifically, Moore is alleged to have deleted a thread of 52 text messages when news broke that Michigan was under investigation for the impermissible scouting. Those texts were later retrieved and Moore was slapped with the Level II for the non-cooperation.
If there had actually been something of import discovered in the texts, Thamel suspects it would be well known by now. And the absence of a smoking gun with respect to Moore leads him to believe whatever punishment to be handed down won’t be overly stiff.
“He obviously allegedly deleted a thread of 52 text messages,” Thamel said. “It does later say he turned them over. If the text messages had like, ‘Hey Connor, what’s Ohio State’s run sign?’ or whatever, it would probably be noted in here and it’s not. So, I think that he’s in here for the act of failing to cooperate, basically. And then eventually he did and you can read through the lines here and say, seemingly, there was no giant smoking gun or they would’ve noted the smoking gun. And there would’ve been a Level I.”
While all the focus inside the Michigan football building is on picking up where Harbaugh left off and chasing a second-straight national title, one former star and recent staffer has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
WATCH: Former Michigan Wolverines Star Denard Robinson Passed Out Behind The Wheel
When he got out of the vehicle, the 33-year-old tried to deny he had crashed his car even though the front of his vehicle was clearly wedged into a pole.
Later during the stop, Robinson performed several field sobriety tests and appeared to bomb them all. He wobbled constantly while trying to walk in a straight line, before he struggled to stand on one foot.
