Ohio State head coach Ryan Day walks off the field after the Buckeyes 13-10 loss to Michigan in November 2024. Credit: Sandra Fu | Photo Editor
The narrative going into this year’s installment of The Game is a familiar and simple one.
Ryan Day needs to prove that he can beat Michigan.
It comes up on almost every radio segment in Columbus, every pregame show and every conversation among frustrated fans.
Losing four straight will do that, and last year’s 13-10 loss to the Wolverines in Ohio Stadium only amplified the questions. Ohio State was outplayed, outmuscled and out of answers. No one in Columbus pretends otherwise.
But what feels strangely absent from the broader discussion of Day’s 1-4 record against Michigan is the context surrounding three of those seasons. Outside of Ohio, the scandal that conveniently occurred during Michigan football’s meteoric rise from 2021 to 2023 is seldom discussed.
Nationally, it has been reduced to background noise, the kind of controversy people acknowledge existed but no longer feel obligated to revisit. But why is that?
In August, the NCAA issued its long-awaited findings on Michigan’s in-person scouting and signal-acquisition scheme, and the details were as direct as they were damaging. According to the Committee on Infractions, Michigan’s sign-stealing operation ran from 2021 to 2023 and violated rules that had been in place for decades.
Connor Stalions, a low-level staffer, bought tickets under alternate names and sent individuals to opponents’ stadiums to record signals. He compiled scouting data and built what investigators described as an organized in-person scouting system. Inside the program, some staff members even referred to the operation as the “KGB,” a detail that would sound absurd if it had not been documented.
During this time, the Wolverines would go 41-3, beating the Buckeyes three times and winning a national championship in 2023.
The operation alone was significant, but the behavior that followed made it larger. The NCAA cited repeated failures to cooperate, including attempts to obstruct the investigation. Stalions threw his phone into a pond before investigators could retrieve it, told others not to share information and directed interns to delete messages. Sherrone Moore, then the offensive coordinator and now the head coach, deleted 52 text messages with Stalions shortly after the story broke, later attributing it to storage issues.
The public learned even more through last year’s Netflix documentary, which gave Stalions a platform to spin, evade, or joke his way around tough questions. His explanations often contradicted the documented facts, yet the documentary contributed to the national fatigue surrounding the story: once something becomes entertainment, people treat it like it is no longer serious.
But here is the point that keeps getting skipped over when the scandal comes up, and it is the part that fans in Columbus have not forgotten.
We will never know what impact, if any, the operation had on the outcomes of the games themselves.
We cannot rerun the matchups without illegally obtained signals. We cannot recreate momentum swings without the possibility that Michigan knew what was coming. We cannot unwind three years of competitive advantage, documented rule-breaking, and a national title season that unfolded during the same window.
We will never know. But that does not mean it did not matter, and it certainly does not mean it could not have.
That possibility, even if it can never be quantified, is part of why the dismissive reactions to the scandal feel disingenuous. When the topic is raised, it is often brushed aside as a conspiracy or excuse-making from a fanbase unhappy with losing. But the NCAA’s findings are not rumors. They are not theories. They are the official record.
Acknowledging the scandal does not erase Michigan’s on-field success, nor does it excuse Ohio State’s failures in key moments. But pretending the two are unrelated, or that one has nothing to do with how the last three years are remembered, ignores the entire point of competitive integrity.
Day still has to win. That will always be true. But the story of the past four years is not as simple as a record, as it includes a chapter that the rest of the country may be tired of hearing about, but that this rivalry will never quite separate from the scoreboard.
