Don't assume Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti is clueless or naive as he deals with Michigan

As the Michigan sign-stealing scandal morphs into a battle of conflicting narratives being spun by highly-paid lawyers, there’s a growing notion within college sports that Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has gotten in over his head by considering an in-season punishment for head coach Jim Harbaugh.

This is an easy theory to put out into the world. Petitti has only been on the job for a few months, he’s never worked on a campus or in a conference office and he hasn’t yet been the kind of public presence we are accustomed to seeing from someone who holds one of the most powerful jobs in college sports.

We saw this phenomenon as well with Petitti’s predecessor, Kevin Warren, who had the misfortune of starting the job almost simultaneously with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because Warren’s background was in the NFL, every decision he was involved in, from staffing changes to whether there would be a 2020 season at all, was laundered through the typical college athletics prism that only people who have worked in college athletics are capable of handling sensitive issues correctly. 

I come at it from a different perspective. After a couple of decades observing the so-called leaders of college sports bungle pretty much every big, existential issue surrounding the enterprise while offering little in the way of solutions or vision, I’m more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to an outsider.

Sure, there’s something to be said for a lifer like SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who has immense institutional knowledge of the business and has an effective hold over his membership. But despite running the most powerful league in America and spending years on every NCAA committee known to man, he has chosen to take the public posture that he’s blameless on issues like realignment and helpless to fix NCAA governance. That makes him the same as everyone else who has shepherded college sports to its current place of near dysfunction.

Petitti comes from a different background, so it’s no surprise he’s handling this kind of intra-conference squabble over sign-stealing and illegal scouting in a way that his peers probably would not. It would certainly be unusual and unprecedented for Petitti to sanction Harbaugh or Michigan before an NCAA-led investigation into the matter is complete. But that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong, and it certainly doesn’t make Petitti clueless or naïve, as he’s currently being characterized by Michigan fans and many in the media. 

Petitti is a Harvard Law School graduate who worked at one of New York’s top white-shoe firms before holding high-level executive positions with multiple sports television networks and eventually serving as chief operating officer of Major League Baseball. He’s certainly no dummy, and the notion that Petitti is simply a puppet for an agenda-driven group of coaches who want to see Michigan taken down a peg isn’t just insulting but almost certainly false.

What’s more believable is that the Michigan accusations resonate more deeply with Petitti than they might with others in his position because he was in the MLB front office when the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal blew up into a massive disgrace for the sport. 

There are a lot of parallels between that sordid chapter and the Michigan story. 

Much like in baseball, sign-stealing in football is a gray area that is considered part of the game — within limits. But much like with Michigan, Astros’ opponents had suspected for awhile that they were doing something far more elaborate and over the line. 

When it finally came to light that the Astros were using a camera to detect which pitch was coming and then relay that information through audio signals to the batter, they argued that others had done the same and that it wouldn’t have affected the outcome because they had such a great team. Michigan is running the same playbook this week. 

And similar to how the Astros’ 2017 World Series title is now widely viewed as deserving of an asterisk, Michigan’s detractors now believe the Wolverines’ back-to-back Big Ten titles and current 9-0 record are in some way tainted.

What might resonate the most with Petitti, however, is how weak the punishments handed down by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred seemed to both fans and opposing teams: A $5 million fine, forfeiture of four draft picks and one-year suspensions for the general manager, assistant general manager and manager while team owner Jim Crane was absolved of any knowledge or responsibility. No banners taken down, no records wiped off the books, no penalties that would prevent the Astros from competing for titles in the future. Essentially, it amounted to a whole bunch of nothing.

Though Petitti’s duties at MLB were more on the business and marketing side rather than on-field issues, he would have had a unique window into how that scandal unfolded. So it would make sense in his current position if he takes his responsibility to protect the integrity of the game rather seriously.

But there’s also one big fundamental difference between college sports and the pros, which Petitti is no doubt getting educated on as we speak. At the end of the day, no matter what the issues and disagreements are, pro teams view each other as business partners. College athletic departments view each other as competitors and thus find it easy to get dragged into petty squabbles and personal agendas while losing their grip of the bigger picture.

That’s a much different dynamic for the leader of a conference like the Big Ten, whose business interests won’t change in any meaningful way as a result of this situation but whose interpersonal relationships will forever be altered. When your primary job is managing the egos and agendas of 14 football coaches, 14 athletics directors and 14 school presidents (18 next year when the Big Ten expands), everything is delicate. That may be the only place where the experience of spending a lifetime in college sports comes in handy for a high-level executive. 

Everything that has happened since Oct. 19, when it first came to light that the NCAA was investigating Michigan for violating in-person scouting rules, has been embarrassing for the Big Ten. Every detail about Connor Stalions, the now-former Michigan staffer who appeared to be running an extensive operation to decode signs by dispatching associates to film future opponents' sidelines, is more cringeworthy than the last. And the response from Michigan warning against a Harbaugh punishment, including a 10-page letter that became public on Wednesday filled with misdirection and weaselly, legalistic sleight-of-hand, makes a mockery of any functioning adult’s ability to add two plus two. 

So it's understandable why Petitti, given an opportunity to get out ahead of this situation in a way that MLB didn’t or couldn’t, would consider exercising the league’s sportsmanship clause to render sanctions now rather than wait for a slow and typically ineffective NCAA enforcement arm to do its job. 

But is it wise, especially when there’s no completed investigation and no transparency into exactly what, if anything, the Big Ten has on Harbaugh? Is it better to live with the possibility of a tainted title or let due process take its course, as unsatisfactory as that may be? Just a handful of months into his tenure, Petitti’s job may depend on making that call at some point in the next several days. He better be right.