J.J. McCarthy’s beef with Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal will sound funny to Ohio State football fans -- Jimmy Watkins

ANN ARBOR, Michigan - J.J. McCarthy sees the injustice in Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal, but not the one you might think. The wins and accolades his Wolverines are stacking don’t match the storylines surrounding them. In fact, the closer his Wolverines get to a third straight Big Ten title, the less credit they seem to garner.

McCarthy swears they deserve it, that Michigan simply out-grinds the programs it has dominated over the last few seasons. So when detractors raise questions about the program’s alleged sign-stealing operation, it bothers him. Ahead of Saturday’s matchup against Ohio State, the quarterback told reporters he works too hard to see the results invalidated.

“Knowing how much blood sweat and tears we put into this season, and all the hours that we’ve put in, (that) being diluted by a scandal and all that, it’s unfortunate, but it’s out of our control,’ McCarthy said. “We only focus on what we control and what we can do to get better every single day.”

Poor, unfortunate Michigan. Must be hard to have your pedigree questioned all season. Or to prepare all offseason for tainted results. Can you imagine?

Oho State football doesn’t have to. Because for the last two seasons, the Buckeyes have been mocked and ridiculed after two straight losses to Michigan. They have, in their mind, trained just as hard and come just as close to a conference title as their archrivals. But both times, they’ve lost all sense of success at the last second for what appear to be shady reasons.

Ironically, nobody understands McCarthy’s misgivings better than the Buckeyes. The only difference is that Ohio State has a right to feel aggrieved.

Michigan’s quarterback can promote his team’s grind all he wants, but nobody outside of Ann Arbor would call Michigan’s plight “unfortunate.” Control what you can control? The Wolverines’ problem is self-imposed. Former recruiting analyst Connor Stalions was a Michigan employee who, according to recent reports, may have funded his operation with Michigan booster money. He stood next to Michigan assistants on game days.

From day one, the evidence suggested this was a Michigan problem. But when Michigan players read the reports - if they even read them - they see anti-Wolverine propaganda. They see a smear campaign built on jealous sources. And as McCarthy said this week, they don’t see anybody who frequents their training room.

“... It’s so easy to look at headlines, so easy to follow the narrative,” McCarthy said. “But when you’re in here and you see what’s going on, you wouldn’t think for a second that it’s anything other than hard work, dedication and execution.”

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What McCarthy calls “headlines” and “narratives,” the rest of college football calls cheating. Ohio State fans cackle at the dripping from “If only you could see” because Michigan (allegedly) could. Gameplans, signals, the perfect counter - UM allegedly saw it all.

McCarthy might not have known it, and he still might not believe it. But his teammates were not the only people who bled or sweat for two straight conference titles. Stallions’ sweaty fingerprints were on the trophies, too. The former analyst was so reportedly dedicated, in fact, that he devalued the dedication of the people around him.

Maybe if you squint hard and forget allegiances, you can see the sadness in McCarthy’s story. The quarterback genuinely believes his team is clean, so it must be difficult to hear otherwise. It must be hard to lift all summer, run gassers and study game tape to no avail. And it must stink to enter Week 12 undefeated without any of the respect that should come with that distinction.

You know what stinks worse, though? Losing a game played unfairly, then hearing your perceived perpetrators pretend like nothing happened. Ohio State lifts weights too. It runs and studies, sweats and bleeds for the chance to play in games like Saturday.

But when the Buckeyes’ season was diluted by scandal, it was actually out of their control. The resulting narratives were actually based on questionable data points. And unlike Michigan, Ohio State didn’t actually deserve any of it.