U.S. Department of Education Releases List of Higher Education Institutions with Open Title IX Sexual Violence Investigations

"All were found not guilty"?  That's not correct.  None of Gibbons, Payne or Appling faced criminal prosecution.  There was no trial, no orderly presentation of evidence, nothing.  Instead, for different reasons none of the three were charged.  That's a far cry from being found "not guilty". 

The core problem is that people conflate the actions of the AAPD (w/r/t Gibbons) and the ELPD (w/r/t Payne and Appling) with the actions of UofM and MSU.  Why they're different is complicated, and people don't pay much attention to complexity: 

• In Gibbons's case, the AAPD determined that it would not proceed with the case, citing what appear to be some dubious reasons.  That may or may not reflect poorly on the AAPD (I think it does), but it has nothing to do with UofM. 
   
• Michigan reopened its investigation of the sexual misconduct case when the federal government changed the burden of proof requirements to show sexual misconduct, and ultimately determined that it had sufficient evidence that Gibbons had violated school policies and was expelled.  The parts that make Michigan look bad are (1) that Hoke and others misled the press as to why Gibbons missed the bowl game, and (2) the reopened investigation took a long time to conclude.  That gave some the appearance that Michigan dragged its feet purposely to keep Gibbons on the field.  Michigan's PR machine did little to attack that perception.
   
• At MSU, there was also a failure of the ELPD to proceed with the case, citing what appear to be dubious reasons.  There was the additional factor of the crime being apparently a multiple party incident, with some of the incident filmed and at least one witness corroborating that it wasn't a consensual encounter.  There was also the purposeful spoliation of evidence (destruction of mobile phone and SD card with video of the alleged assault), and failure to do a timely rape kit and get DNA samples.  Despite the makings of a stronger case, the ELPD or the prosecutor declined to proceed.  That has little to nothing to do with how MSU handled the matter.
   
• The MSU administration apparently did little to nothing to investigate the claims, and worked the PR machine to depict Payne as a sickly-child loving saint.  (My opinion is that Payne, and MSU by implication, used that poor little girl as a prop - if that seems cynical, it's only because I've seen others use cancer kids as a prop and it's pretty easy to recognize if you've spent enough time in a Children's Hospital.)  MSU expelled nobody, and has run clock on any investigation.

Some of those facts may be off a tad, but that's the gist of the situation.  On the player side, there's really not a lot to distinguish Gibbons from Payne and Appling.  There's a decent chance they're all scumbags, based on the police reports.  On the school side, UofM did the right thing by expelling Gibbons, but did a terrible PR job by giving critics the appearance of trying to cover things up.  MSU, on the other hand, masterfully delayed their process and promoted Payne as a hero to a girl suffering from terminal cancer (making him pretty hard to attack in the mainstream media).

So that, IMO, is how the situations are different. 

Sorry to come after you twice TM'sagoblin (i usually really like your posts), but you're assuming that Gibbons was tossed (i) without any real evidence and (ii) due to public perception. 

I don't think it's fair to Michigan to assume that there was no "real evidence" of a rape.  Read the police report and see if you disagree.  Also, there is no evidence to suggest that the investigation was conducted due to public pressure.  The investigation was due to the federal government changing the evidentiary standards, and requiring schools to reopen cases under the new standards if students were still at an institution.

but the whole reason that protocols changed is that rapes are heinously underconvicted by the legal system, ie the process from rape-->reporting-->investigating-->charging-->trial-->conviction so heavily favors rapists that the federal government decided to allow different avenues of punishment outside of the court.