Michigan: Give Back the Win You Didn't Earn

Article: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/49961280/fbs-oversight-committee-says-overturn-wmu-loss

Petition to: President Domenico Grasso and Athletic Director Warde Manuel, University of Michigan

On September 5, Western Michigan beat Michigan. The clock hit zero. The Hail Mary fell incomplete. The game was over.

Then one second appeared on the clock that shouldn't have been there, and Michigan won 13-12.

This is no longer a matter of opinion. On September 16, the NCAA's Division I FBS Oversight Committee found that instant replay protocols were not followed on that play, and that had they been followed, the outcome of the game would have been different. The governing body of college football has said, in writing, that Michigan did not win that game.

The NCAA says its rules give it no power to correct the record. The Big Ten says the same. That leaves exactly one party who can make this right: the University of Michigan.

We are not asking Michigan to admit wrongdoing. No one is accusing the Wolverines of cheating. They ran the play they were given. The failure was the officials'.

We are asking for something harder and better: that Michigan voluntarily vacate the victory, formally request that the Big Ten Conference record the game as a loss, and recognize Western Michigan as the winner.

Michigan spends a great deal on the idea that it stands for something beyond the scoreboard — the Leaders and Best. Character is what an institution does when the rules let it keep something it knows it didn't earn.

A 100-plus-year-old program with 11 national titles will survive one corrected loss. What it cannot survive is a generation of its own students learning that the standard is "we kept it because nobody could make us give it back."

Give the game to Western Michigan. Be the program you say you are.

Sign to ask the University of Michigan to do the right thing voluntarily.