Cam Warde Tampering: Biggest Scandal in Pac2 History
With The Game over and the result Another Resounding Victory, let's take a moment to reflect on the reality of college football rules and the hand-wringing over "competitive advantage."
I was scrolling TwiXter this morning and noticed the "Cameron Ward Receiving Multiple Million Dollar Offers" story. A few people commented that he hadn't entered the portal yet and so any school comms seeking to recruit him away from his current school would be considered tampering. This is, of course, against The Rules (TM). The account I had originally seen posting this story did a follow-up tweet acknowledging that this is "essentially normalized tampering" in a kind of matter of fact tone while the main focus of the story in every outlet that published it is just excitement over who will land a great QB.
Taking this a bit further, if you simply search "Tampering College Football", you'll be bombarded with a million articles about how rampant this practice is. Quotes from despondent G5 coaches lamenting the loss of their burgeoning star players every year are littered throughout:
Last August, NCAA officials sent a letter to members seeking help as they investigate cases of NIL inducement and tampering. Their enforcement staff needs these reluctant coaches and players to start providing “documentary evidence and details on the record” in order to expedite investigations. Coaches and athletic directors who’ve confronted other schools about tampering incidents have told The Athletic they’re reluctant to move forward with an NCAA inquiry or even go public with allegations because they don’t want to harm the player and they know pursuing it would be perceived as “sour grapes” or, worse, vindictive.
“Nobody’s really turning anybody in because nobody believes anything is gonna be done,” one coordinator at a Group of 5 school argued. “Who is the NCAA gonna bang on this? They ain’t gonna bang a blue-blood program on this, I promise you that. And, until something really substantial is done, it’s just gonna keep happening.
This is basically it in a nutshell. Many on this board have spent the last month carefully parsing NCAA bylaws to see if third party scouting is technically breaking the poorly-written bylaw that shouldn't technically have been available to Pettitty for use to leverage a B1G penalty against the program. Of course, Richard had his lawyers write up some marginally coherent slop and the cackling man hens who make up whichever goofy bureaucratic committee that "votes" on this type of decision rubber stamped it anyway. Michigan took its lumps instead of creating a larger media frenzy and then went out and handled its business anyway.
The reality of this story is very simple and it annoys me that people still don't seem to understand it on this board of all homer places. No, you do not, as a matter of fact, "gotta admit they kind of got us here and we should take our lumps" nor do you have to hate Connor Stalions for stepping into the utter wild wild west that is college football and doing what was presumably a very good job. The simple fact of the matter is that every single program has dozens of guys all working in various ways to skirt/break rules to gain competitive advantage. Any single one of those guys, if targeted by a hundred thousand dollars worth of investigating by a PI firm who then flushed the findings through a PR firm who worked with a cynical media apparatus hungry to create drama and clicks, could get launched into a story that would look exactly like the CS story. People who don't know anything about the need and drive within these programs to push every conceivable limit to gain any edge (big or small) will read any of those stories and be taken aback. "Golly gee, I'm shocked to find out there is gambling going on in this establishment."
To circle it back to the beginning, the internet lawyers may dig around in the language and find that ackshually, if the school goes through a 3rd party interlocutor to make the NIL offer, it might not technically be against the rules hmmm. Sure, and maybe hiring your friends to record signals with an iphone could be parsed similarly. The point, of course, is to ask if landing a game ready, proven quarterback via possibly illegal means is worth more in terms of competitive advantage to a program than having some marginally improved understanding of Ohio State's signs from when they played Northwestern. No offense to Steven Threet, but I'm taking the quarterback. And yet, when exactly this is happening every year all over the country, there is no media firestorm. There are a few arms folded, brows furled articles about the "secret world of such and such in college football" but it doesn't get a dedicated wikipedia page for a single occurrence. It is largely ignored, a piece of trivia that die hard fans and various insiders talk about in euphemistic terms.
To wrap up this self-serving "should have been a diary" or "this is a message board, not group therapy" rant, think about why you're being told a story. Think about how much you actually know about the topic. Does the tone and outrage level match the alleged infraction? Is paying a guy to stare at grainy sideline footage of PSU that is 90% available from all-22 footage THE GREATEST SCANDAL IN B1G HISTORY? When you read the articles about Cam Warde and you realize the CS story could have been a few puff pieces in The Athletic which sounded something like "Inside the Naval War College Roots of Michigan's Scouting Machine" try to begin directing your ire at the proper targets. CS was the target of a sleazy media campaign that required a very abnormally malicious investigation, a willfully ignorant and mendacious media apparatus, and an ignorant and easily-outraged audience. Don't be a part of that last group.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:39 PM ^
It’s happening to half the teams in that conference. It’s huge.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:55 PM ^
But are they offering him hamburgers?
That would be an absolutely egregious, unforgivable crime
November 29th, 2023 at 1:47 PM ^
"Outrageous, egregious, preposterous!"
November 29th, 2023 at 2:57 PM ^
So you’re taking the case?
ohh it’s on.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:39 PM ^
I believe the term is 'preaching to the choir?"
November 29th, 2023 at 12:41 PM ^
I'd like to think so, but we've definitely got quite a few overly credulous posters (some of whom have been around for a long time) who took part in a lot of hand wringing over the previous few weeks.
November 29th, 2023 at 1:33 PM ^
They've quieted down (or been banned) recently.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:41 PM ^
The Pac2? I think it's appropriate to look at "more seasoned" programs - to see how it's really done and hidden form sight. Where should you look? Let's just begin with the SEC - since, after all, "it just means more".
November 29th, 2023 at 12:43 PM ^
A few of the schools implicated are SEC teams. Ohio State was also on the list. It will be mostly a non story, though. The meat of the media energy will remain on who is going to land this great QB, not the fact that they will have broken rules to gain a pretty serious competitive advantage in doing so.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:58 PM ^
I agree. And, part of what defines my thinking is - should there be any other controls / guidelines the NCAA can put in place and actually enforce?
Two items come to mind quickly.
First - paying prospects for visits? Should there be a guideline / rule that defines this - prohibits it - or places a limit on the amount of money can be provided / spend?
Second - when I think of Arch Manning's OV to Texas - and the cost of that OV was $ 800K, can this be considered "excessive"? I wouldn't be surprised if there are G5 programs that don't have a recruiting budget that's greater that $ 800K.
Is the NCAA even attempting to create a level playing field of some kind? Or, has the NCAA burying their head in the sand and just waiting until the next dust storm settles.
November 29th, 2023 at 1:06 PM ^
I think those scenarios would legally require an entire revamping of NIL and college football generally. I don't know the ins and outs, but NCAA capping OV via NIL or via direct school payments would be an antitrust issue among probably a million other things. It's a very uncomfortable middle ground right now.
November 29th, 2023 at 10:50 PM ^
The NCAA is taking the small cases they have and making them bigger than they should be. Thus, keeping them engaged.. but not on the big ones they need to be engaged on!
November 29th, 2023 at 1:32 PM ^
Supposedly, Ohio State is one of the teams looking to pay Cam Ward $1 million, along with Miami, TAMU, Washington, & Auburn.
🚨 | BREAKING: Washington State QB Cameron Ward has already received over TEN $1 million offers to transfer schools...
— Blue Bloods Bias (@bluebloodsbias) November 28, 2023
The WSU star finished #4 in total passing yards in all of college football, & will be one of the top returning QBs in the sport.
It has been CONFIRMED that the… pic.twitter.com/HD1ggmFPwq
November 29th, 2023 at 1:36 PM ^
I'm sure Jonathan Smith doesn't want to see Cam Ward at Spartan Stadium again next year
Ward was a little hard on the Beavers that night a couple months ago
November 29th, 2023 at 2:40 PM ^
OSU keeps screamin, they're paranoid,
Quick, someone bring back Coach LLoyd.
November 29th, 2023 at 3:03 PM ^
Fantastic wordplay. My dad used to make a similar joke all the time.
November 29th, 2023 at 2:36 PM ^
It would be a shame if a full dossier showed up at BigTen HQ provided by a PI firm with “no ties” to any BigTen program. Just drops out of the fucking sky with the dirty details of Mr. Warde’s 2nd recruitment. A true shame that would be….
November 29th, 2023 at 12:43 PM ^
Who is the NCAA gonna bang on this?
One guess.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:44 PM ^
No one at all.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:51 PM ^
NCAA: Who is tampering?
Everybody!
NCAA: Are sec teams involved?
Everybody, YES…
NCAA: Nothing to see here
November 29th, 2023 at 2:37 PM ^
NCAA: is Michigan involved? Alert the press
November 29th, 2023 at 2:31 PM ^
The Mountain West will be given a strict punishment for lack of institutional control once OSU and WSU join.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:45 PM ^
The conference is not even four months old; any scandal would be the biggest scandal in Pac2 history.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:46 PM ^
Would appreciate spelling his name properly, especially as it's spelled correctly in the link, but yes, this is a real thing worth spilling ink.
Deion Sanders was specifically called out by some coaches about a year ago for this practice.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:50 PM ^
As was Lincoln Riley as it relates to Jordan Addison, as one of the linked articles mentions. But you can go ahead and search "Jordan Addison Lincoln Riley" and the first result is:
Lincoln Riley's transfer portal wins: Looking at USC's roster after ..
The point of the post is that no one really cares
November 29th, 2023 at 1:17 PM ^
Would appreciate spelling his name properly
"Cam Warde" had me worried this was some kind of Warde Manuel onlyfans scandal
November 29th, 2023 at 12:46 PM ^
Only programs that refuse to do things on principle, which comes down to only those ultra rare programs with principles, wouldn't do it.
Which means that Michigan probably doesn't do it.*
*admittedly, a staffer, who may or may not contract himself out to multiple programs, might well be doing it, as guided by page 513 of his manifesto for taking over the college football world.^
^nevermind; Michigan has (probably?) learned its lesson, and will hopefully never permit such a thing again.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:46 PM ^
Don't forget our AD who historically bends over and takes whatever the NCAA wants to give it and continues to do so to this day. Other schools don't cooperate while our school asks what they can do to help pursue the investigation. Bunch of fucking idiots and morality simps. If no one else is gonna play by the rules, then why the bloody fucking hell are we!?
November 29th, 2023 at 10:57 PM ^
I can't imagine how large Warde's hemorrhoids are after the last 45 days!
November 29th, 2023 at 12:47 PM ^
If you've spent time around college football at any level, you have a firm understanding that no one obeys the rules. Paying players, tampering, sign stealing, academic rule breaking, recruiting violations, advanced scouting etc. It goes on everywhere and has for decades. They can't police it and would rather not. They have no solutions and are always reactive instead of proactive. It is what it is, but we love it.
November 29th, 2023 at 2:39 PM ^
then what does the ncaa go with the hundreds of millions it receives? i would love to see the audits.
November 29th, 2023 at 6:26 PM ^
I have no answer for you. I imagine a lot of administrative people are lining their pockets, but I have no concrete proof. It's similar to the US government. There is so much money being thrown around and hidden under different umbrellas. They will most likely have the same people that are lining thier pockets perform the audits and tell us it's all good. It's a clown show.
November 29th, 2023 at 12:51 PM ^
Nothing to see here. Unless Michigan decides to throw our hat in the ring. Then it would be the most dirty, underhanded thing to ever hit any sport at any level.
The level of selective enforcement goes so far beyond "arbitrary and capricious" and definitely is reaching "collusion" levels. Hopefully it blows up the NCAA altogether.
November 29th, 2023 at 1:01 PM ^
I always thought the hate toward CS was a bit much, and it was probably made worse by the fact that he's so weird, with the vacuum cleaners and the manifesto. The only reason he seems sketchy to me is the Blake Corum thing, otherwise he would just be a geeky football-obsessed dude. That said, I don't keep up with CS rumors and goings-on, because I just never cared much. I was always paying attention to the conference, I really didn't care one bit about what CS did because I never believed there was an advantage from it, or there was some player safety thing, or anything else. I always thought it was an accepted practice to watch your opponents, and had no idea it was so weirdly forbidden by the NCAA.
Nobody wants to say "I don't care that we broke a rule," but in this case, I'd bet most of us don't care about breaking the rule so much as we care about not being cheaters. Figuring out the opponents' signals is not cheating unless it's prohibited and enforced across the board. Since it isn't, this whole thing is dumb. If someone broken into Ryan Day's office to steal his notebook of signs and big secrets, that would be B&E and cheating. But going to a public event as a spectator and looking for patterns? It's a stupid thing to prohibit or worry about. You're supposed to hide your signals because your opponents are going to look for them. It's all just so stupid.
November 29th, 2023 at 1:11 PM ^
Yea. If you read the athletic article about tampering, it's very clear that there's a massive amount of rule breaking going on and the coaches all just kinda keep it in house because they know their own house isn't super clean because no one's is.
November 29th, 2023 at 1:57 PM ^
What do you call Maurice Clarett’s messages to Arch Manning and all of his famous relatives that their lives would be best spent for the next three years in Columbus?
November 29th, 2023 at 1:14 PM ^
Don’t aggrandize Stallions. This is all his fault.
November 29th, 2023 at 1:16 PM ^
What USC did to Pitt with Jordan Addison should have prompted at worst discussion, at best regulation.
Nobody cared about USC screwing Pitt.
Nobody cares about WSU getting screwed.
And when principled people spoke up, they were shouted down “b/c the kid benefitted.”
November 29th, 2023 at 2:33 PM ^
Xavier Worthy had been on campus like a week and UT was already calling him, lol. Texas specifically are the most prevalent tamperers in the country.
November 29th, 2023 at 1:19 PM ^
With these transfer QBs, am now wondering...
What are the educated odds JJ is returning?
And if not, what are the odds Orji is the starter, and not some transfer? I want Orji to play, for getting a transfer might not go well with this team like with Shea. Pissed alot of player off that Speight left.
November 29th, 2023 at 2:07 PM ^
Not sure but JJ has chance to beat OSU 4 times which I don't think has been done by any other Michigan QB since the times of Biff.
November 29th, 2023 at 10:21 PM ^
JJ could only beat OSU 3 times unless he has eligibility beyond 2024(which would be his senior year if I read right)
November 29th, 2023 at 1:20 PM ^
If I were Cameron Ward, I'd counter all the offers and say "I'm going to accept one of these and I'm going to provide evidence of tampering on all the offers I don't accept. Best and finals are due tomorrow."
His value then goes to Value of Player + Value of Not Getting Caught + Value of Rivals Getting Caught. Boom...$2M+ NIL :)
November 29th, 2023 at 1:27 PM ^
NCAA: "C'mon guys, please stop it. Please. You know it's wrong. I trusted you."
November 29th, 2023 at 1:30 PM ^
I said it before they are trying to crush the Boy Scout that beats even their sleazy machinations! Burgers and eager beaver newly hired analysts. Psshhaww!
November 29th, 2023 at 2:01 PM ^
I didn’t read all of that
November 29th, 2023 at 2:09 PM ^
Point well taken here and I appreciate your contextualizing that this "scandal" has been massively overblown and in the most generous of terms curiously sourced and unfairly discussed by many talking heads with both national microphones and message board usernames. Although I'm somewhat embarrassed to say it, I have, as I'm sure many of us have, lost actual sleep over this whole "scandal" and have let its existence occupy way too much of my mental and emotional energy. That said, I do not think the media has been wrong to report on it, and I don't think U of M should have escaped punishment for it.
There were rules broken here. Sure you can probably find a loophole like Stallions had his friends do the recording, and we can say that other programs break other rules and don't get caught, or don't get punished, or get punished in ways that are well below what the infraction would seem to call for. But this isn't about other programs or other rules or the media. This is about what Stallions and by extension U of M did. That other bad, nefarious, unfair, worse things are going on does not mean we shouldn't be called out (appropriately) and punished (appropriately) when we break rules. That we make a lot of money for the conference doesn't mean we should be allowed to break rules and go unpunished (this is not something you've raised here but many others have elsewhere). There has to be some accountability somewhere to the rules everyone (including U of M) agreed to.
Obviously, the scale/severity of this issue has been massively overstated, and I would argue the punishment (given what we know at this point) has been more than sufficient. I agree that all rules including tampering should be enforced and with an even hand that follows precedent and conducts investigations and considers evidence before making judgements. Many of those basic procedures were carelessly violated here and bad new precedents were established. I hope desperately that U of M will hold the BIG 10 to those precedents going forward (I doubt they will).
This whole experience these past couple months has made me more ready than ever to leave the NCAA behind, create a real super league with a real commissioner and payed players and an actual playoff etc. But since we aren't there yet U of M and all of us, I think, need to be the "do it the right way" kinds of fans and team we believe(d) we are. That means taking this bitter fucking medicine and not whataboutism-ing and loophole-ing our way through this "scandal."
Especially now, as we head to Indy, we are better than that. Go Blue!
November 29th, 2023 at 2:31 PM ^
I appreciate the tone but I disagree with the substance. This whole thing is best analogized by those lists of goofy laws that hang around in state code that are outdated and unknown like no fishing while facing east on a Sunday or no buying ketchup before sunrise except on the weekends. If we were all suddenly faced with a media blitz about how a person had been "caught" fishing in an easterly direction last weekend and was facing prison time, we'd all know that this is an extremely malicious process. These types of stories rely on people lacking that context, though. I have no time for people saying such a prosecution is deserved. It simply is not.
November 29th, 2023 at 4:09 PM ^
I don't necessarily disagree with your analogy here. This rule (no in-person advanced scouting of opponents) for a program like U of M with essentially unlimited funds for it's football program is antiquated and shouldn't exist. The reason it does exist is because the vast majority of programs that make up the NCAA don't have those kinds of funds for their football programs and need to spend their athletics budget on things other than advanced scouting.
So there is this rule that doesn't make sense for U of M and a handful of other elite programs to follow but is kept around because the vast majority of NCAA member institutions like it (I believe this specific rule was revisited in 2021 and not changed). However, here is where I think your analogy to quirky antiquated State laws breaks down. The "fishing while facing east" law doesn't serve anyone's interests and is likely so antiquated that it no longer serves its intended function. This scouting rule does still serve, as determined by some number of schools, some kind of function and so is still on the books.
The issue I think we would both agree on here is that the spirit of this rule (leveling the playing field between schools like U of M and say EMU) is a farce because those two schools are not on the same level in a million other ways that the NCAA can't and doesn't try to regulate. This rule and many others at play in the NCAA rulebook can help EMU and WMU play on a much more level field but because U of M and the handful of other top tier programs haven't taken the long overdue step of decoupling from the NCAA we are still caught up in these same rules.
At the end of the day, we did agree to these (stupid) rules. We are a NCAA member school. The issue here, I think, is that we should not be an NCAA member school because this rule and many other rules don't serve us and the other top tier programs well.
November 30th, 2023 at 10:37 AM ^
The "fishing while facing east" law doesn't serve anyone's interests and is likely so antiquated that it no longer serves its intended function. This scouting rule does still serve, as determined by some number of schools, some kind of function and so is still on the books.
"as determined by some number of schools" isn't really cutting it for me here, to be honest. There's all-22 tape with more than enough sideline footage over a few games to catch enough signals to match the CS sheet we've seen. I think I recall seeing it, unless that was the OSU/Rutgers to Purdue playsheet that we saw...which is a good example of no one at all actually caring about this rule in terms of practice or enforcement. The B1G doesn't have an in person rule and so relied upon a general sportsmanship rule which means that the "scheduled" modifier shouldn't affect B1G understanding of a competitive advantage wrt sign stealing via in person scouting. Maybe some schools did actually determine this, but absolutely no one cared about that instance of it and so I think it's fair to say that this is much more likely to have been a Chesterton's Fence type of review than anything related to effect of the rule (ie shrug and say "why bother changing it?").
I also kind of dispute the idea that WMU doesn't have enough of a budget to get a staffer or the friend of a staffer to a few midwest MAC games. Those tickets aren't exactly hot items most of the time and a hotel or a buddy's couch in Mt Pleasant is similarly reasonable. In any case though, and this is actually pretty key, if the rule relates to protecting small budget schools then it makes sense in the way it is written which doesn't disallow third party advanced scouting. If the University isn't paying for this then it is precisely within the bounds of the spirit of the rule which was a financial one.
At the end of the day, we did agree to these (stupid) rules. We are a NCAA member school. The issue here, I think, is that we should not be an NCAA member school because this rule and many other rules don't serve us and the other top tier programs well.
You're both right and wrong here. We did agree to an explicit set of rules. Much like you agree to go 70 mph when you get on the freeway (here anyway). But when you get on the road and every car is going 72 at the very least, that's the practical reality of these rules. If your ex wife's brother is a cop who hates you and you jump on the freeway going a casual 72 mph in the right hand lane and you suddenly see the flashing lights behind you, a ticket for that speed is eye brow raising. Clearly this is not about the rules, this is an almost certainly malicious punitive action taken under color of law and it should be viewed as illegitimate because that's what it is. If you also get your car impounded and tossed in jail for the night it's even more egregious. Now, if the same scenario unfolds and it's just a random cop, you might not know why he hates you but you can be certain that he does because he's watched hundreds of cars whizzing past in the left hand lane at 79 mph for hours. He can tell you that he's simply enforcing the law but you'd only be a sucker if you actually believed him.
We have huge programs right now pretty blatantly buying athletes via tampering and there is no outcry and no press. These are teams who are illegally taking the best players from other teams. This is not filming sidelines with an old iphone and trying to gain a 2% edge on an already marginally effective practice in general. Are those rules actually real? No, they are not. They only BECOME real in certain situations and for some schools with which other schools and other bureaucrats have an axe to grind. Should we still absolutely abide by them while our rivals stack talent by skirting or breaking them? That's a good way to become an afterthought of a football program. And while I don't think M is as blatant or egregious in terms of surreptitious contact with these athletes as other schools, I'd think you'd be a little crazy to believe we don't participate in this practice at some level. It is the default norm for good programs.