Getting more intense.
"The coaches in the Big Ten are looking for wider punishments as Michigan has undergone quite the turnaround while going 33-3 overall and 22-1 in the conference in the three years with evidence of Stalions purchasing tickets to opponents' games to facilitate the scouting network in place.
By comparison, the program was 21-11 overall and 16-8 in the Big Ten the previous three years.
Thamel noted that Michigan could be disciplined for violating the Big Ten’s Sportsmanship Policy while the NCAA investigation continues.
"I mean, you're shooting fish in a barrel," one coach said in the survey. "If I was able to do what Michigan was doing, that would be the difference between big-time winning and losing. If you filmed all the signals from a game, you'd take that and put it into the film system and match up the play-by-play with what the opponent is running. And then, I mean, it's over. Having a steady film of the signals during a game would be mind-blowing."
Big Ten coaches clearly feel the Wolverines had an unfair on-field advantage during the past three years.
"People don't understand the seriousness of it," a source told Thamel. "How it truly impacted the game plan. To truly know if it's a run or a pass, people don't understand how much of an advantage that was for Michigan."
It seems like the sentiments expressed by Big Ten coaches on the video call are shared by many in the profession across the country.
In a survey of head coaches, coordinators, assistants, analysts and staffers from teams in all 10 FBS conferences, Bruce Feldman and Max Olson of The Athletic found 94 percent believed Michigan should be punished, 74 percent think the sign-stealing scandal is a contributing factor to the program's recent turnaround and 70 percent do not believe Harbaugh's insistence he was unaware of it.
