Houston, Texas - Amid all the outside noise, Michigan has one main focus heading into the College Football Playoff championship game against Washington.

In the lead-up to the College Football Playoff National Championship, Michigan football head coach Jim Harbaugh is emphasizing one key theme for the Wolverines: maintaining a one-track mind.

Seeking their first national title since 1997, the team is zeroed in on bringing home the hardware, which would marking the first for the program after nearly 25 years and for the Big Ten since 2015.

Despite the ongoing investigation into a Michigan sign-stealing scandal that has put the program's integrity in question and resulted in a three-game suspension for Harbaugh, the coach remains unfazed.

He is unwavering in his focus for the upcoming game and expressed little concern about the potential consequences of the alleged cheating.

"As I said, getting ready for this game, one-track mind. I don't know if you want to live in rumorville or speculation, but we just don't really have any room to be doing that at this point," Harbaugh told reporters Wednesday. "That's done elsewhere."

While preparing for the College Football Playoff National Championship game against Washington, the Wolverines' cheating scandal continues to inisght chatter across college football.

But according to Michigan quarterback JJ McCarthy, many other teams have been linked to sign-stealing, too.

McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday that rivals Ohio State also allegedly stole their signs in either 2019 or 2020.

"It's so unfortunate because there's probably, I don't want to say a crazy number, but I'd say a good number, 80 percent of the teams in college football steal signs. It's just a thing about football. It's been around for years."

He added: "We actually had to adapt because in 2020 or 2019 when Ohio State was stealing our signs, which is legal, and they were doing it, we had to get up to the level that they were at, and we had to make it an even playing field."

Interestingly enough, though McCarthy spoke with confidence in his accusations of Ohio State, he wasn't on Michigan's football team in 2019, and the Wolverines didn't face Ohio State in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Heading into the national title game on Monday, McCarthy believes it's Michigan's hard work that that got them there, not cheating.

"I just feel like it sucks, just because like Mason said, we do work our butts off," McCarthy said.

"We do watch so much film and look for those little tendencies and spend like 10, 15 minutes on one clip alone just looking at all the little details of the posture, of the linebackers or the D-ends, the safeties off levels, the corner to the field is press but the corner to the boundary is off, little stuff like that."

Michigan will suit up against Washington on Monday night at 7:30 PM ET airing on ESPN.