Ric Flair thanked Desmon Howard for standing up to Paul Finebaum and his verbal assault on Michigan and Jim Harbaugh over a sign-stealing scandal.

But what is the legendary wrestler thanking the ESPN “College GameDay” analyst for?

The former Michigan star stated the Wolverines want due process before any discipline is handed down. Public outcry, he said, is driving the Big Ten to make hasty decisions. Howard then compared the Big Ten to the SEC.

“This would never happen in the SEC,” Howard said. “The SEC commissioner would never ever let Vanderbilt and Kentucky and all these other universities say, ‘Hey, you need to punish Nick Saban and Alabama right now. We know they are on a quest to win the national championship, but the Hell with that. You need to punish them right now.’ He would kick them out of his office. That would never happen.”

On Tuesday, Flair called out Finebaum for what has been a pretty consistent verbal assault on Harbaugh and the Wolverines program.

The Big Ten’s case against the Harbaugh-led Wolverines is that they violated the conference’s sportsmanship policy by conducting “an impermissible, in-person scouting operation over multiple years” that resulted in “an unfair competitive advantage that compromised the integrity of competition.”

Harbaugh said that when the Big Ten handed down its discipline, suspending him for the final three games of the regular season, he was informed via social media, which he saw on someone else’s phone during a flight Friday to Penn State.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.