ESPN - “What college football coaches are saying about sign stealing”
Interesting article posted this morning on ESPN: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38727764/what-college-football-coaches-saying-sign-stealing
A bit more balanced of reporting than what we’ve seen over the weekend, giving more voice to coaches that think this isn’t a big deal. Still quite a bit of grumbling featured in the article but the tone is a departure from the pearl clutching going on from Thamel, Mandel, etc.
October 24th, 2023 at 12:21 PM ^
But nobody did it on Ohio State.
That is what pisses us off.
October 24th, 2023 at 1:39 PM ^
Well both head coaches before Day i.e. Tressel and Meyer got into trouble and essentially were forced out for non-football related reasons.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:48 AM ^
Ryan Day is soft as a newborn baby. He's watched his team against Notre Dame. He's watched his team against PSU. And he's watched Michigan. And you know what? He knows full well what's coming for him in November. He's trying to pre-emptively save his ass here. "oh oh look look they cheated"
You done f*&ked up here, Ryan. The boys were going to beat your soft ass team either way this year, but now you made it personal. That was a bad idea. I weep for the families of the Buckeye players who will have to witness what Michigan is going to do them next month.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:04 AM ^
He's still playing the part really hard about TOUGHNESS through. Adam Rittenberg fluff piece yesterday on ESPN:
"That was as loud as I've heard it in a long time," coach Ryan Day said. "I just felt the toughness, the physicality on defense."
I also thought this was interesting:
Although Day occasionally easing up has irked some Ohio State fans, he also has a luxury to do so for the first time since 2019.
"If you feel your defense can flat-out win you a game, then you have to make sure that you're doing your part," Day said. "You can't be selfish in that moment, as much as you'd like to push the pedal to the metal. The goal is to win the game. Sometimes, we forget about that."
I bet you do, because Ryan Day is an offensive genius and the way OSU is supposed to win is through Ryan Day's offensive genius. Just ask him.
Ohio State football pivots to a defense-first mentality - ESPN
October 24th, 2023 at 10:23 AM ^
MHJR truly is a Maserati. He is beautiful to look at, just like a Maserati. However, like all Maseratis, he will soon be confoundingly broken on the inside, thanks to Honda McCord's scattershot throws and Charlie Hough changeups.
October 24th, 2023 at 12:23 PM ^
Maserati Marv and Honda McCord. What a pair.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:50 AM ^
The problem with the Evil M narratives being pushed around right now is that if this is just a big open secret that Michigan is doing this, that would create a huge competitive advantage for opposing teams. It's great to break an enemy's code; it's almost as good to be aware that the enemy has broken your code and then feed them bad info using the outdated code. What are the implications of this? The obvious take is the one being begrudgingly admitted by a lot of insiders and coaches. This stuff is ubiquitous and doing it and defending against it is totally baked into the strategy of every high level program in America. There is an equilibrium naturally reached in this sort of game theory situation. Anyone pretending to not understand this is simply lying
October 24th, 2023 at 9:57 AM ^
Absolutely. The victimhood is amazing from "tough and smart" football guys. If you think your signs are compromised, change them. Feed the opponent crap information to lull them into a false sense of security. Use wristbands to avoid having to use signs altogether. If you truly believe that your opponent's advantage is only due to them having your signs, there are endless counters to either negate that advantage or even turn it to your own advantage.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:28 AM ^
Coach Day's brightest assistant: Coach, Michigan is going to know when we're going to blitz a corner or run toss sweep. What if we give the sign to blitz the corner but actually have him fake the blitz and then drop into the hole that would have been created by his vacated zone, baiting the hot read interception? What if we also fake the sign for toss sweep and run a reverse pass assuming that Michigan bites hard on the heavy run action? We're going to be totally in their heads if we flip this on them.
Coach Day: No, we will lie down and die in Columbus on Saturday
This is legitimately the narrative that people are running with
October 24th, 2023 at 10:30 AM ^
If you think your signs are compromised, change them.
To be fair, that's easier said than done when a team has a roster full of players who "ain't come to play school"
October 24th, 2023 at 10:02 AM ^
I’m just glad this happened now. No more excuses available for any opponents the rest of the season. Let’s see how it turns out…
October 24th, 2023 at 10:04 AM ^
Excuses don't work that way unfortunately.
October 24th, 2023 at 12:24 PM ^
But Scoreboard, Bitches does.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:35 AM ^
"Sign stealing" sounds much more scandalous, even though it's permitted.
Grifters gonna grift.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:03 AM ^
This is the money quote, and why I fully expect there to be non-UM fallout going forward.
"There's honor amongst thieves," a former SEC coach said. "Want to turn someone in? Fine. But you better make sure no one in your building is doing anything remotely resembling cheating."
While we all sort of know it was Ryan Day who snitched, if I'm any of the other teams in this conference I'd sure be worried about that other team implicated and what else might get out, to say nothing of UM saying "fuck it" and dropping names on guys from other programs.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:08 AM ^
Nothing will happen. To the NCAA, it's OK if it's not UM.
The NCAA barely budged when the FBI investigated programs, but they're going after Michigan over cheeseburgers and recon.
There's no "conspiracy" here because there's no secrecy involved. The NCAA is after Michigan and Michigan alone, we even know who's who, and they're not even trying to hide it.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:32 AM ^
I do think that one asshole there has a thing out against Harbaugh and co. and so, yeah, I do think there's a certain amount of additional focus being put on Michigan. But this was a violation, at least in spirit, of a rule, as was Harbaugh taking those guys out for a burger. It's trivial, jaywalking shit for the most part, but it's still a violation.
But UM has a lot of money and a lot of lawyers, and the NCAA isn't a court of law with any real power. They can huff and puff as much as they want but they have limited recourse, and if this is some personal vendetta by someone working there that tends to only go so far. It was telling over the weekend that the guy who originally posted the info on UM being investigated on Reddit posted a follow-up saying that the NCAA committee didn't necessarily view this as a huge deal and didn't expect the accusation to leak when it did, and so they're sort of scrambling now. It's part of the reason you're seeing all this stuff get leaked out as quickly as it is - they're struggling a bit to make this ultimately seem bigger than it probably is given how frequently it happens elsewhere.
I do think they'll try to make an example of UM to an extent but the "they'll ban them from postseason play this year" feels like fever dreams by rival fans and some media types who sort of suck as human beings and journalists. The NCAA has rules but they're a private organization and if they push too hard UM can absolutely look to bring this to civil court, at which point the NCAA loses a ton of leverage.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:20 AM ^
Goodellian in its popgun ineptitude. Can Cryan hand the trophy to Jim at years end to complete this circle of life?
October 24th, 2023 at 10:11 AM ^
I loved when Ole Miss and Miss State were both outing their own cheating efforts (a few years ago) in order to be used as evidence against the other.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:26 AM ^
Steven Godfrey (Ole Miss grad) put a whole multi-part documentary basically about how Miss St. was cheating just as much as Ole Miss did during the Hugh Freeze era. Since Godfrey was attached it was pretty mediocre and pedantic, but it absolutely highlighted how teams know about all the rule breaking everyone else does and just sort of agreed to not talk about it.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:44 AM ^
The identity of OSU’s sign stealer is known to the Michigan staff, according to Sam Webb:
It sounds like Ohio State has suspected Stallions’ staff role to be that of sign stealer for some time, just like folks in Ann Arbor have suspected quality control coach Brent Zdebski having that same role in Columbus. Every team has someone, and most coaches don’t cry about it.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:57 AM ^
Sounds like an investigation is needed here.
Wait, I'll come in again...
October 24th, 2023 at 10:11 AM ^
If any coach has the guts to go on-record and call this out...that will go to show that they don't care about broken windows in their glass home.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:38 AM ^
You can already see JH and the players using this as extra motivation. “Nobody believes in us but us.”
I can’t wait until November 25th.
Fuck Ohio.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:55 AM ^
If they don’t say: it’s laughable - they have an agenda. Equivalent to ticketing 5 mph over. Stupid.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:07 AM ^
Nice part of all of this is how many haters have exposed their ass. This is not happening in a vacuum and Harbaugh's remember. UM may be solid to beat the spread going forward. :)
October 24th, 2023 at 11:12 AM ^
Bunch of sissies that are scared of M, and don’t want us to be good.
All this is some serious little brother shit, osu you have now earned a flavor of that. Cry more
October 24th, 2023 at 11:15 AM ^
This situation is similar to "Deflategate." No amount of logical discussion is going to change the mind of people who want to think that cheating was involved to gain a competitive advantage.
The only thing Michigan can do is continue to win after the alleged cheating, similar to what New England did in 2015.
October 24th, 2023 at 12:29 PM ^
Tom Brady won four Super Bowls after Deflategate. That's why nobody talks about it anymore.
Go out and dominate from here and win the National Championship and it will do the same thing.
October 24th, 2023 at 1:04 PM ^
Deflategate doesn't even survive scrutiny of the game it was about.
The allegation was that the Patriots deflated the game balls before kickoff, and their crime was discovered during a halftime inspection.
The margin in the first half was 17-3. The margin in the second half was 28-0.
The real story was, the NFL was desperately looking for a petty story to distract from the string of domestic violence scandals that were tarnishing the league. The Patriots were top dog at the time, so they went after them with this and a sign-stealing scandal of their own.
Just like how the NCAA wants to not be thought of as a bunch of emasculated idiots, they're waging a PR war over this even though OSU changed their signs last year and got beat worse.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:19 AM ^
"Woooooaaaahhhhoooooah...they're stealing our signs!"
Such a chicken shit, sad as hell, butthurt reaction to getting your asses kicked on the football field.
And if it will make you feel better about your upcoming ass kicking, change your signs (again) pansies.
Honestly, our future opponents should just tell our players the snap count, play or scheme at the line of scrimmage to speed up the game and lessen the blow....(they'll be able to get our 4s in the game much sooner.)
And what was Sparty's excuse for that blowout?...Not enough walkons played?
October 24th, 2023 at 12:00 PM ^
Day is basically outing himself as a candy ass whiner to the coaching community. Dude will be lucky to get a job once the Buckeyes lose patience with his soft teams.
October 24th, 2023 at 12:43 PM ^
The article says: "When LSU played Clemson in the 2020 College Football Playoff, sources said the staff suspected Clemson of sending people to scout them in the SEC championship game...."
I think it is pretty clear that you can scout in person at conference championships, as shown below.
The rule says:
11.6 Scouting of Opponents.
11.6.1 Off-Campus, In-Person Scouting Prohibition. Off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents (in the same season) is prohibited, except as provided in Bylaws 11.6.1.1 and 11.6.1.2. (Adopted: 1/11/94 effective 8/1/94, Revised: 1/14/97 effective 8/1/97, 1/19/13 effective 8/1/13, 1/15/14)
11.6.1.1 Exception -- Same Event at the Same Site. An institutional staff member may scout future opponents also participating in the same event at the same site. (Revised: 1/11/94 effective 8/1/94, 10/28/97 effective 8/1/98, 1/19/13 effective 8/1/13, 9/19/13, 2/7/20, 6/30/21 effective 8/1/21)
11.6.1.2 Exception -- Conference or NCAA Championships. An institutional staff member may attend a contest in the institution's conference championship or an NCAA championship contest in which a future opponent participates (e.g., an opponent on the institution's spring nonchampionship-segment schedule participates in a fall conference or NCAA championship). (Adopted: 1/15/14, Revised: 2/7/20, 6/30/21 effective 8/1/21)
October 24th, 2023 at 2:05 PM ^
MGoLawyer FTW.
October 24th, 2023 at 2:06 PM ^
It says: An institutional staff member may attend a contest in the institution's conference championship
Clemson is in the ACC, not the SEC . . .
October 24th, 2023 at 1:39 PM ^
Unfortunately, ESPN and a few other platforms on social media have labeled this “greater than what the got the Patriots in trouble during SpyGate”…that’s a direct quote.
Since nobody gives a fuck about anything deeper than headlines, everyone with an opinion is in their feelings.
October 24th, 2023 at 1:50 PM ^
Coach Prime was asked about it today. He seemed to think it is not a big deal and "everyone is trying to get an edge". He said "You can have someone's whole game plan, they can mail it to you, you still gotta stop it." He said "I don't buy into a lot of this, you still have to play the game."
For all you Coach Prime haters, after you get through the showmanship, he seems pretty level headed on a lot of football related things.
October 24th, 2023 at 2:17 PM ^
Am I crazy or are they saying sign stealing is a normal part of the game and in person scouting is a big fucking problem?
I can't stand the denialism, this Stallion guy was straight up cheating in indefensible fashion. This is not good and we need to find out how high up it went.
October 25th, 2023 at 2:54 PM ^
Stallion was always at our games. Therefore he wasn't doing any in-person scouting. Getting scouting, even electronic, from third parties is allowed. Now, there may be context that still makes what he did against the rules, but we haven't seen any yet. You're taking dumb postions, settle down yourself.
October 24th, 2023 at 5:13 PM ^
It might be a little presumptuous to assume that this is every school in the BIG is out to bring Michigan down. Harbaugh can't possibly get under team's skin to the point of them all colluding to bring down the program. MSU, PSU and OSU I get, the rest is kinda silly. Witch hunt? Seems to be.
If someone sat 20 rows up so they have a clear view of the opposing sideline, how far would that be from that seat? approximately 100-110 yards away? How clear could someone get with a smart phone? If you zoom that far in its really hard to keep the subject in the field of view standing in the stands. And how clear would hand signals be or even the poster boards. And then there is rumor of video proof this was happening. EVERYBODY in the stands has a phone and most are using them throughout the game. Is that really proof? Seems awfully circumstantial.
Heard Doug Karsch say on the air that he talked to JH after the news broke. He said, "I refer you to my statement. But, I don't break NCAA rules." He may be a jerk, but he does have integrity.