Michigan30-24 victory over rival state of ohio solidified their spot in the Big Ten championship game for the third straight season, as the Wolverines will face No. 17 Iowa Saturday for the conference title.
Conference championship game will represent Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh‘s returns to the sidelines after serving a sentence three-game suspension from the Big Ten amid the program’s ongoing investigation into sign stealing, a story that has dominated and surrounded the Wolverines since reports surfaced in October.
On Sunday, Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz spoke about Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal before the conference title game, providing an interesting overall perspective on the whole situation.
“If you want the big picture, this is something that could probably be fixed very easily.” Ferentz said. “Whoever has to meet, just has to vote. And a lot of things, different technologies have been talked about, it seems, for maybe not a decade, but almost. And that would be an easy way to fix everything. I know baseball has had some issues, I think they’ve fixed that. We could have solved this problem probably ten years ago.
“So it feels like a lot of things have happened in the NCAA and in college football. We’re a very slow train when it comes to being progressive, trying to improve things, just improving the quality of the game. So this kind of falls into that category. …It really doesn’t concern me. But one of these days, maybe we will take the necessary steps so that this topic will no longer be a topic discussed by anyone,” Ferentz explained.
The sign-stealing investigation in Michigan was accompanied by its share of debate on all angles of the situation. This also includes what Ferentz is referring to regarding the potential use of in-helmet communication between coaches and players on the field, similar to that of the NFL, to prevent further sign-stealing in the future.
Many factors would go into implementing this technology at the college level, none of which will be adopted until after the Big Ten Championship game, as Ferentz shifted his dialogue to how the Michiga sign-stealing scandal is linked to Saturday’s match.
“Full disclosure, I really didn’t pay much attention to it,” Ferentz admitted. “We are in the middle of the season and we are fighting for our lives every week. So that’s kind of where our focus is, that’s where it’s going to be this week. And I think that’s kind of a separate category. It really doesn’t affect our team, our players. And we’ll try to be as smart as we can, moving forward here with those things in mind.
“But it’s not really going to impact us. What impressed me is the way their players play on the field,” Ferentz added. “These guys are very aggressive, they are very well coached, they have good technique and they are very talented . And again, this is not a new phenomenon for Michigan. But that’s where our focus is and I think we’re going to have our hands more than busy and more than full just trying to do this that they do so well.
Ferentz and Harbaugh faced off in the Big Ten title game two seasons ago, and the Hawkeyes are hoping for a different result this time around when they face off this Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium at 8 p.m. ET.
