Scott Van Pelt's One Big Thing: Michigan's sign-stealing scandal - ESPN

The thing about what the Houston Astros did, which cost their manager and GM their jobs, was they took something everyone in baseball does — stealing signs — and used video to elevate it to a place that was unacceptable.

In football, at every level, everyone steals signs. If I can steal yours, it's on you to change them. Watch the line of scrimmage when a quarterback is going through his cadence and every linebacker seems to react and signal to his team what's coming based on a check they hear. It's because stealing signals — at a basic level — is an understood part of the game.

What did Michigan do? You know the allegations surrounding a football assistant who resigned. Who can prove what is really the question, and who knew? Plausible deniability is always the key here. Are there enough layers between the head coach and whoever broke the rules (allegedly) to protect the head coach and the school from punishment?

As for the punishment… who is going to deliver it? The NCAA? Sure. It just got around to not doing anything to anybody attached to the FBI probe into college basketball from 2017! Remember that one? The «we have your playbook» news conference about recruiting at some of the biggest programs in the sport, which led to nothing happening? At least not to the head coaches… tell that to the assistants who spent time in jail.

So, does that leave a brand-new Big Ten commissioner in Tony Petitti to drop the hammer on one of the biggest brand names in the sport, and the all-time winningest program in the game? That seems unlikely. This feels like a spot where everyone tries to kick the can down the road long enough to buy time to allow things to pass. Although with this many eyes waiting for some conclusion, that's