An analyst that works for the University of Michigan football team was suspended due to purchasing tickets to non-Michigan games of future opponents and giving them to others to record plays and signs. According to NCAA rules, sign stealing is not illegal as they are in full view of tens of thousands of people. Scouting in person at non-team games is illegal.
Why does NCAA live in the stone age and keep using giant poster signs? High schools have wireless headsets but NCAA doesn’t. The cost is not prohibitive anymore.
As a UofM fan, I’m embarrassed beyond belief. They joy over the last 2.5 years was so high after a couple of decades of good but not great play. Even if the wins are not vacated, there will always be a cloud over everything.
I hope they continue to win out and dominate everyone. Even if other governing bodies (Big Ten or College Football Playoff Committee) prevent them from bowl games or playoffs this year, I know this team is special. They have a chance to prove it with wins over Penn State and Ohio State.
I have absolutely no love lost for the University of Michigan, but I really don’t understand the reasoning behind prohibiting staffers from in-person scouting.
So, sometimes its okay if I steal your signs, but sometimes it’s not? I’m sorry, but just can’t work up any outrage about this. Michigan is laying waste to their opponents because they have a fab team, not because they stole some signs.
Looks like it’s OK to steal signs, but going to a game your team isn’t involved in (in order to steal signs) is right out!
Which makes sense as it seems to be entirely a money issue, schools with lots of money can hire someone to fly to a bunch of games, and schools without money can’t.
As the NCAA doesn’t limit the amount of money a college can pay its coaches, pay for training facilities, pay for … well pretty much you name it except for salaries for players, why would this be an issue? I’d think it a relatively minor cost in the scheme of things.
Not sure if plain old scouting would be a problem. The problem is:
A source told ESPN on Tuesday that the NCAA has been sent at least an hour of video evidence that shows a person sitting in a seat appearing to video the home sideline with a smartphone. Stalions purchased the ticket for that seat.
If he’s shooting the sideline and not the action on the field, that’s not scouting. It’s sign-stealing.
Yes, Michigan is probably good enough to win without this, but other Big 10 programs are right to be pissed.
The NCAA could go the Bridge route and make every team publish their signs.
I’m a Buckeye, so I take glee in seeing UofM make unforced errors. If they sucked, I could kind of understand it. But cheating now is just so, so stupid.
You can steal signs all day and all night. But you can’t travel to a future opponent’s current game to steal signs, or study their schemes, or assess their players, or do any activities that can be called “scouting”.
But you can scout. They just use video. So really the only reason to ban in person “scouting” is because of sign stealing. It’s the only important thing that game film won’t show.
Won’t it? It’s been mentioned several times in this thread that college teams send calls in using big giant posters, which nearly always show up on the broadcast. Which just makes Michigan look even dumber for breaking a rule that’s dumb to begin with.
They occasionally show up during the broadcast, but not frequently enough to calibrate the posters with the ensuing play. To do that, you’d need to capture every sign and every play – as Michigan seems to have done.
I went to U of M and still root for them, so I’d love for this to be a nothingburger. But so far, it doesn’t look like one.
FWIW, I think the rule is stupid. None of the programs Michigan is alleged to have stolen signs from lacks the resources to do the exact same thing. But it’s a rule, and if Michigan broke it, there should be penalties.
Eh… Rutgers might (and yes, Stalions is alleged to have traveled to Rutgers to steal our signs).
Just because folks may think a rule is stupid (and the NCAA does have a lot of these sort of rules for some reason or another) doesn’t make it any less of a rule. And UM appears to have blatantly violated it, in the stupidest way possible.
HS football rules actually bans players using electronic communications equipment unless on the sideline. You can borrow a coaching headset to talk to someone in the box, but can’t have an earpiece on the field, same as in college.
I don’t watch a lot of sports on TV, but will occasionally stumble across a college football game and see a few minutes of it. Ive never noticed any signs on the sidelines to signal what play is being called. Anybody have any video, or images?