Investigation of Michigan football for sign-stealing stems….
Investigation of Michigan football for sign-stealing stems from NCAA rules made to curb financial advantages
In the past, it was usual to spot a college football coach observing a game involving a potential opponent, making notes and obtaining intelligence.
“I was at the next (opponent) game on Saturdays when I worked for Jimmy Johnson at Oklahoma State. Houston Nutt, the former coach of Arkansas and Mississippi who was under Johnson’s tutelage with the Cowboys in the early 1980s, noted, “I was scouting the next game.”
Not every school could afford to conduct in-person advanced scouting, which is one of the reasons the NCAA outlawed it in 1994. The NCAA is currently looking into Michigan for an alleged sign-stealing plot in which personnel were deployed in undercover to record opponents’ games.
No. 2 A low-level football staff member who is the subject of an NCAA investigation was suspended by Michigan on Friday. All of Michigan’s upcoming opponents have been notified by the Big Ten. The Wolverines defeated rival Michigan State 49-0 on Saturday night, continuing their undeterred run through their schedule.
The NCAA does not expressly forbid sign theft. A major point of contention for Michigan is NCAA Bylaw 11.6.1, which states that “off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents (in the same season) is prohibited.” There are regulations against utilizing electronic devices to capture an opponent’s signals.
Jim Harbaugh, the coach of the Michigan Wolverines, who was suspended by the school for three games earlier this season due to a separate, ongoing NCAA infringement case involving recruitment, has denied any knowledge of or involvement in illegal advanced scouting.
Yes, there is a target. After the win on Saturday night, Harbaugh stated, “Everyone has pointed that out since the beginning of the season, but our guys are very focused.”
Similar to numerous other NCAA regulations, the association aims to control any potential financial advantages that one school may have over another. Annual athletic budgets of more than $200 million are allocated to programs like Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, and Alabama—almost twice as much as some of its rivals in the Power Five conferences.
Even the highest-spending major college football programs outside of the Power Five have budgets that are more like $50 million than $100 million.
Professor David Ridpath of Ohio University, a former compliance director at Marshall and Colorado State, recalled that, as an assistant coach, Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee once went to a CSU game in Fort Collins to scout the Rams during a week when the Volunteers were off.
A few years later, the NCAA decided to end it in response to grievances raised by coaches and administrators.
“And it was truly a financial issue because there were so many coaches leaving, and to be honest, some of them didn’t even want to continue.
Plus, technology was changing at that time, too,” Ridpath said.Every game is recorded for self-scouting purposes by the home team, but a long time has passed since actual film was exchanged between opposing teams. Access to digital recordings of games is readily available through online exchange programs.
The way the game is played now also has put more of an emphasis on signs, and in turn sign-stealing.
For most of Nutt’s career, which started as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma State in 1981, teams would mostly methodically huddle in between snaps, with plays sent in via player substitution.
As offenses began to abandon the huddle for an up-tempo approach in the 2000s, signaling both offensive and defensive plays from the sideline became more of a necessity. And with that, teams started trying to decipher each others’ signs.
Many teams use hand signals and will have multiple signalers on the sideline to try to confuse opponents. Some teams use elaborate play cards — Beyonce, Kermit the Frog, Scott Van Pelt and scores of other images have been used over the years.
Frequently spotted on sidelines these days is a large sheet, tarp or poster board used to shield signs from ending up on scouting film.
Still, somebody in a stadium could conceivably be monitoring or recording signals that can then be matched up to scouting film for decoding.
In the NFL, where advanced scouting is allowed, the New England Patriots were caught recording opponent signals during a game in 2007 and were sanctioned with fines and the loss of a draft pick.
Hand signals largely have gone away in the NFL over the last decade, replaced by radio technology in helmets that allow coaches to verbally communicate with some players on the field.
Player-to-coach communication has been a persistent topic in college football, where the rules have to cover hundreds of schools with vastly different resources. Much like with in-person scouting, concerns about creating a competitive advantage based upon resources and a lack of consistency in implementation have been a stumbling block.
Still, this year during bowl season, the NCAA will allow teams to use coach-to-player communication technology during postseason games if both sides agree.
Steve Shaw, the national coordinator of football officials and secretary rules editor for the NCAA, said that instead of trying to standardize the technology and force every team to use the same setup, teams will be permitted to use whatever they want.
Shaw said he hopes it’s a step toward coach-player technology becoming the norm in college football.
“If we can get to a world with no signals,” Shaw said, “that’s just one less thing to worry about.”