McCarthy: U-M players ‘did things the right way’
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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
As No. 1 Michigan prepares to face No. 2 Washington on Monday in the College Football Playoff National Championship Presented by AT&T, Wolverines players pushed back on allegations of their involvement in the highly publicized sign-stealing scandal, saying any possible NCAA penalties, including vacating wins, wouldn’t detract from their accomplishments this season.
“We did things the right way as players,” Wolverines quarterback J.J. McCarthy said during a teleconference Wednesday. “It would be very unfortunate [to] not get recognized for all the hard work that we put in and everything we accomplished over this last year.
“But at the end of the day, you know it’s not going to change the amount of accomplishment and the amount of pride for being on this football team and just everything that we accomplished because we know what we put in. We know the work that we put in, and we know that we did things the right way as players. Whatever happened, with all the outside controversies, it’s out of our control, and whatever the NCAA wants to do is out of our control, but we’re going to appreciate the things we did control and accomplish.”
Michigan will take the sport’s greatest stage Monday with two separate NCAA investigations still looming — one into the sign-stealing scandal that allegedly spanned multiple seasons, and another into alleged recruiting violations during the COVID-19 season. It’s possible the program will face NCAA sanctions that could include vacating wins.
While a majority of college football teams, if not all, try to steal signs during games from opposing sidelines and from game film they study, the NCAA prohibits off-campus sign stealing. The Big Ten this season suspended coach Jim Harbaugh for the final three games of the regular season for an off-campus sign-stealing operation led by former staff member Connor Stalions, who resigned Nov. 3.
Harbaugh, who also served a university-imposed three-game suspension at the beginning of the season for the alleged recruiting violations, said any talk of NCAA sanctions at this point is purely “living in the world of rumorville or speculation.”
“We don’t have any room to be doing that at this point,” Harbaugh said. “Our time’s spent elsewhere.”
Michigan sophomore defensive lineman Mason Graham said he felt most of the allegations of cheating were aimed against the defense, but said their only edge is watching film to study tendencies.
“I feel like we just have a high football IQ here at Michigan,” Graham said. “And you know, we go over specific situations multiple times a week, just kind of just learning more about the game every day, every meeting, just kind of just building the IQ and being smarter football players all around so we pick up on things faster. Even if it’s in-game adjustments stuff, I think little stuff like that film study really helped us this year.”
McCarthy on Wednesday also alleged rival Ohio State was legally stealing their signs in 2019 or 2020 and the Wolverines “had to adapt.”
“They were doing it the legal way,” McCarthy said of the Buckeyes. “We had to get up to the level they were at and make it an even playing field. It sucks because we do work our butts off. We do watch so much film and look for the little tendencies and spend like 10, 15 minutes on one clip alone just looking at all the little details of the posture of the linebackers or the D-end … little stuff like that where it’s like, OK, you can say it’s all sign stealing, but you know, there’s a lot more that goes into play … a lot of work that gets masked just because of the outside perception of what sign stealing is all about.”
Graham said it was all part of the adversity the team overcame this season, and that’s not something the NCAA can take away.
“We’ve kind of been working all the way up until this moment,” Graham said. “Things happen along the way that don’t fall into place. We’ve overcome a lot of adversity this season. I felt like it’s brought us closer together.”
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Pete Thamel
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Eli Lederman
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Eli Lederman
ESPN Staff Writer
- Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.
Julian Lewis, the No. 2 player and quarterback in the 2025 class, decommitted from USC on Sunday, sources told ESPN, sealing a seismic development for one of the nation’s top prospects in the closing weeks of the recruiting cycle.
Lewis’ decommitment, which had been expected, comes the day after the 6-foot-1, 195-pound quarterback took an unofficial visit to Georgia for the game against Tennessee. He also visited Colorado on Oct. 26 and expressed interest in Indiana throughout his recruitment.
The plan remains for Lewis to commit in the upcoming weeks and enroll early in school, according to sources. He’s the top uncommitted player in the class of 2025 and his choice looms as one of the biggest stories of the early signing period with Colorado, Georgia and Indiana expected to contend for his signature before the signing period opens Dec. 4.
Sources also told ESPN on Sunday that four-star Texas A&M quarterback pledge Husan Longstreet, No. 47 in the 2025 ESPN 300, has flipped his pledge to USC in the wake of Lewis’ departure from the Trojans’ incoming class.
USC quarterbacks coach Luke Huard attended Longstreet’s playoff game at Corona Centennial High School in California on Friday night, and ESPN’s No. 4 pocket passer visited the Trojans during their game against Nebraska on Saturday.
Lewis had been verbally committed to the Trojans since Aug. 22, 2023. Yet questions had swirled over his recruitment from the summer into the fall and all the way through to his decommitment from USC on Sunday.
Lewis’ move marks the latest blow to a USC class that has now lost six commitments from the 2025 ESPN 300 in this cycle.
That list of high-profile departures from Lincoln Riley’s incoming class includes five-star defenders Justus Terry and Isaiah Gibson, and Lewis’ exit stands as USC’s third recruiting loss in the past seven days following the flips of defensive lineman Hayden Lowe (Miami) and cornerback Shamar Arnoux (Auburn).
The Trojans sat ninth in ESPN’s latest class rankings for the 2025 cycle prior to Lewis’ decommitment.
With the move, Lewis instantly regains status as the one of nation’s most sought-after uncommitted prospects. He first entered that realm in 2022 when he burst onto the national scene with 4,118 yards and 48 touchdowns while leading Carrollton to the Georgia 7A state title game in his freshman season.
That debut campaign earned Lewis a place as the No. 1 prospect in the 2026 class before he reclassified into the 2025 cycle earlier this year, several months after his commitment to USC last August.
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