Signgate The Fourth: Dials Of Doom
It's science. Raj has a set of dials you could run a nuclear powerplant on:
click for big
A Sopwith update. Sopwith has privately shared the source of his information with us and has been spot-on so far, so here's the update if you aren't an obsessive message-boarder:
1. "Follow the Money" won't lead anywhere. The money indeed came from Stalions' personal funds. Stop biting your fingernails off.
2. No coaches/staff knew anything other than he appeared to be a Ray Babbitt-level savant at deciphering signals from the normal raw materials. This isn't escalating.
3. Only the Vast Network (TM) had the shared Google drive pw, but the drive link was installed on his work computer. Not clear if anyone in Schembechler could potentially have accessed but WaPo took this and spun it in the most click-maximizing, heartburn-inducing way.
As I said in response to the Post article, it simply did not seem possible that Stalions would be physically able to give anyone from the outside access to an internal Michigan drive that other coaches regularly used. That is not how IT works in large organizations.
If the above is true—and it should be according to Occam's Razor—it is likely that Stalions successfully quarantined his illicit data from the rest of the organization. Probably by accident. Now we have to hope that Stalions didn't have a post-it note on his desk that read "PASSWORD FOR GOOGLE DRIVE I SET UP FOR VAST NETWORK OF OFF-CAMPUS SPIES: 12345." I got that 60-40 in favor of the good guys.
[After THE JUMP: Jim Stapleton speaks, unwisely]
Also. I asked Richard Hoeg for a Virtual Legality on the sign stealing and he provided:
I remain unconvinced that the NCAA is going to go over its own bylaws with that sort of lens; it is not a court of law and is clearly making stuff up as it goes a long. It would be nice, though.
Never respond to the haters. Well, Jim Stapleton, you've just convinced everyone you did exactly what John U Bacon said you did:
My initial tweet was causing confusion (my mistake!) so just tweeting it again.
— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) October 26, 2023
Jim Stapleton, a U-M alum who is involved with the NCAA's COI, has released a statement responding to @Johnubacon's claims he is leaking information.
He does not technically deny Bacon's claims. pic.twitter.com/evX9Vwb9rJ
This reads like a 13-year-old cosplaying as a lawyer. Love the empty threat of defamation at the end, and the air quotes around "writer." Hey! John U Bacon has written many books. If you want to insult someone with an air-quoted "writer," you insult me like that.
This statement feels kind of disqualifying for a guy who's on the NCAA infractions committee? This committee is supposed to generate the impression of an elaborately sane group of people committed to enforcing NCAA rules in the most even-handed manner possible. A dude who listens to one radio segment and releases the above statement does not seem like the kind of person you want anywhere near an infractions case—any infractions case.
FWIW, Sam Webb points out that if Stapleton had much sway around the athletic department Jim Harbaugh would have been out the door after the COVID year.
A varied slate of opinions. An anonymous survey of coaches would be interesting, because the both-sides nature of newspaper-ish reporting continually leads to consecutive paragraphs like this:
ESPN surveyed coaches in the aftermath of the news out of Michigan to see what they thought. Some were aghast at what Michigan is accused of doing. Others shrugged their shoulders. A Big Ten coach said, "If they were sending people to live-scout and film, that's bulls---, then they should catch hell."
But another coach with Big Ten and SEC experience asked what the big deal was in practical terms. Between the TV broadcast, coaches' tape and what fans film with their phones and post online, the coach said there's more than enough footage that's accessible without ever leaving the office. "Anything that happens in the public eye hasn't gone too far," the coach said. "To be honest, I can watch TV copy [of] two to three games and get everything I need."
There's a distinct correlation between how many pearls you're clutching and the proximity of a game against Michigan. Also this emphasizes how incredibly stupid the whole scheme was. You're attempting to optimize 2% of your program when it's already 85% of the way there.
How serious can this be if no one wanted to fix it for cheap? I'm having a hard time reconciling the idea that what Stalions was doing was absolutely beyond the pale with the NCAA's incredibly blasé approach to ending sign stealing for good:
"It's 10:56 right now," an industry source said. "They could call CoachComm [which produces headsets for nearly all of the FBS] and have this fixed by 11. They could overnight helmet speakers to every school by the end of the day."
Berry's frustration built slowly over the course of a half-hour conversation, starting with mild annoyance over coaches' shenanigans and ending with outright anger over the NCAA's inability to take up the solution staring them in the face.
"This is too easy a problem to solve," he said.
I'm also baffled by what looks like an outright refusal by Michigan opponents to wear wristbands and turn all of Michigan's effort in this department into a zero. Stalions pushed the envelope, yes. How are you going to tell me this is an egregious violation of competitive spirit when the whole sport could have erased the whole enterprise of sign stealing for the equivalent of a couple pennies?
The arguments against this are such transparent garbage…
SEC coaches discussed utilizing in-helmet communication this spring, but it ultimately went nowhere, sources said, after two main points of contention were brought up: possibly voiding the warranty of helmets and not being able to use them in nonconference games. Big Ten coaches have discussed installing helmet communication, which several support. They were told cost, reissuing warranty and liability language on the helmets could be a stumbling block.
In recent conversations with Bill Carollo, the Big Ten's longtime coordinator of football officials, he has strongly advocated for the use of helmet technology to limit signal stealing.
"We were able to play a COVID year, but we aren't able to put transmitters in headsets?" a Power 5 coach said. "C'mon."
…that it's clear the reason this hasn't happened is coaches don't want it to.
A mixture of annoyance and grim delight. Dellenger has another article at Yahoo about the TCU game, and how their brilliant gambit of leaving in some fake dummy signals led to many touchdown, hooray:
They mixed in new play-call signals with old ones, using what one TCU staff member described as “dummy signals” in an effort to trick the UM staff. The dummy signals were old play-calls that had since been changed. Players were told to ignore the dummy signals and run the original play as called with the new signals.
“Sometimes we froze a play before the snap,” said one TCU coach. “We’d call a play and then we’d signal in another play with an old signal but we told players to run the original play.”
Dellenger attempts to demonstrate that this was fatal to the Michigan defense:
Dykes and staff crafted a game plan that, at least in part, used the dummy signals to fool coach Harbaugh and signaler Stalions. TCU scored first-half touchdowns on drives of 10 plays for 83 yards and 12 plays for 76 yards. The Frogs scored more points on Michigan than any team that season (51), eclipsing the next highest scoring opponent by 24 points.
Guh. This is an especially egregious version of Lying For Clicks since it leaves out the following facts:
- Michigan threw two pick-sixes.
- TCU's other four first-half drives netted a total of 43 yards.
- TCU had 15 drives to score those points in.
Also, we chart these games. Seth's review of the defense against TCU has just one RPS –2 in those two first half touchdown drives, and that was a clear bust on Michigan's part—a corner blitz on which nobody covered the WR set free. At no point in the first half did Michigan completely dorf something in a way that seemed associated with a TCU playcall. The two RPS –1s on those drives are a rub route that picked up six and a QB draw against a light box that picked up four.
Meanwhile, TCU's EPA/play in that game? 0.04, 54th percentile, with a large portion of the EPA on plays where Michigan just screwed up. The sad fact about that game is that Michigan bottled it.
This quote is just… do you know what probability is?
“There are some times in the game that they still got us,” a TCU staff member said, “especially on short-yardage.”
A team with absolutely no knowledge of the oppositions signals will still "get" the opposition fairly frequently if they are making their defensive calls with a basic knowledge of opposition strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. You have not been betrayed every time an opponent blitz gets through. FFS.
So let me make sure I understand:
— Bryan Mac (@Bry_Mac) October 26, 2023
Everyone in the Big Ten knew Michigan was stealing signs. They told TCU. TCU made one simple change, and they scored a billion points and won.
I am compelled to ask: why did those Big Ten teams still get stomped? https://t.co/JFSfwP4HTm
OTOH, at least the article probably makes one guy on the OSU message boards wonder why Ryan Day couldn't have managed something similar given that OSU prepares for Michigan every single day.
The hammer thinks everything's a nail. One thing this whole situation makes clear is that there are a whole lot of people out there who have Main Character syndrome. Stalions, obviously, but also the always-anonymous coach talking about how his sign gambit changed everything. There is of course the TCU coach above who would like to take credit for TCU beating Michigan, thankyouverymuch, despite there being essentially no evidence that sign subterfuge was even a minor factor. So too this anonymous sign-stealer guy hit up for an Athletic article:
Let’s start with the Ohio State video. To the uninitiated, it looks bad. But Michigan’s coaches were not breaking the rules. Our signal stealer thinks he knows exactly what happened on the play.
Michigan holds up a white sign with a Nike swoosh. That tells the defense to not jump offsides on the hard count because Ohio State is about to check to the sideline. The sign goes down. C.J. Stroud and the Buckeyes offense look to their sideline for a call. Michigan’s staff reads it and points to the sky. A new sign with an image of Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young goes up.
“That’s probably their pass board when they think a pass is coming,” the signal stealer said. “By the way, everybody’s pointing to the sky now. That’s their sign for pass, another hand signal to alert people.
“If I’m at Ohio State, I see that right away and immediately I’m saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to go to wristbands right now. They know it. I don’t know how they know it, but they know it.’”
Again I must emphasize that this was third and goal from the four against a team that was ~120th in power success rate. Michigan could have picked this up by formation tendencies, personnel tendencies, or watching any Ohio State game under Ryan Day. All of these articles are interviewing people with a huge incentive to overstate the importance of stealing signs, because it makes them seem cool and important.
And finally: why? A second take from that Athletic article:
He does not believe Michigan’s alleged scheme is commonplace, calling it “next-level s—” that crosses the line.
“I hope I’m not naïve in thinking he’s the only one to do it,” he said. “I don’t know.”
In his experience, there’s no need to cross that line. If you spend enough time studying your opponents with a combination of TV broadcast tape and game tape, you’ll find patterns. The process of carefully watching signalers and logging everything he sees is time- and labor-intensive. It’s not easy to watch tape without sound and crack these codes. But it does tend to pay off. …
“I promise you, within a day, I could take the average fan and watch three TV copies with them and they’ll know signals by the end of it,” he said. “We’re trying to signal in a play that a college kid has to comprehend. This isn’t rocket science. The signals are not ridiculously tough to figure out.”
Just the dumbest way to get in trouble with the NCAA. Paying 15k for one recruit would have been far more efficacious.
Etc.: Apparently Michigan's dummy signals were busted in 2010 because it was always RichRod. Brady Quinn is like nah.
October 27th, 2023 at 2:49 PM ^
+1 for the Spaceballs reference.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:16 PM ^
+12345
October 27th, 2023 at 3:35 PM ^
That’s the same combination as my luggage!
October 27th, 2023 at 4:47 PM ^
Hartmann only has 4. Guess my code
October 28th, 2023 at 11:53 AM ^
“That’s the same as my MGoBlog password” cstallions2012 probably
October 27th, 2023 at 2:55 PM ^
Well, this is all making me feel somewhat better, except for this other anonymous mogboard user not so subtly hinting at yet even more trouble coming outside of sign gate. Honestly feel like that type of stuff needs to be quarantined until it can be verified, and if not verified, then ban the guy.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:11 PM ^
There have been...a few threads in the last week. Can you link this, just so I can add to my paranoia?
October 27th, 2023 at 4:03 PM ^
I dont think he's lying by any means, but he seems to have a single source that is reporting something considerably different from anything else we're hearing. Harbaugh skipping meetings with the NCAA and Michigan having OSU practice tape sounds more like OSU fanfic than reality. Like Harbaugh stiffed both Ono and Warde without telling them? Doubt
Could be wrong obviously but it doesnt sound credible
October 27th, 2023 at 4:56 PM ^
I don't want to rag on the guy but he's hard to understand. I stopped caring.
October 27th, 2023 at 5:01 PM ^
The one scary thing is that this post lines up generally with what that poster has been saying
October 27th, 2023 at 5:14 PM ^
I still think a scandal so large would be known outside the depths of OSU message boards. This is like citing The Edge for Michigan info. Sometimes credible, often not
October 27th, 2023 at 7:21 PM ^
And it wouldn't be coming out more than a year after Weiss was let go. The victim would have been alerted way back then and we'd know all about it by now.
October 27th, 2023 at 5:31 PM ^
Idk too many things in that post don’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
and it’s just catnip to the OSU fans. The ending about how OSU is so much better as people because they would never support a coach accused of such egregious cheating. Give me a fucking break.
October 27th, 2023 at 5:36 PM ^
That post reads like a Q conspiracy nut wrote it.
October 27th, 2023 at 5:44 PM ^
Was just coming back to edit. The accusation being leveled in that post is straight out of the qanon playbook. Accuse your enemy of the most heinous thing possible, let the fallout ensue.
October 27th, 2023 at 5:51 PM ^
Some assholes have been trying to link Weiss's firing to CSAM since it happened last year and there is just no indication that it's ever been legitimate.
October 27th, 2023 at 5:52 PM ^
Why would buckeye message boards know that and not Michigan insiders?
It 99.99% buckeye fanfic
October 27th, 2023 at 6:44 PM ^
So Matt Weiss supposedly had kiddie porn and OSU practice tape on his computer and he hasn’t been charged with the kiddie porn thing and he was too stupid to erase the practice footage and he got caught after the OSU game (to do what exactly?). Oh, and only OSU fans know about it. OK.
October 27th, 2023 at 8:41 PM ^
Goblue418 I don’t want to tell you or your source what to do, but given the rumor that OSU fans are running with, I think you guys would be better off shutting that shit down as quickly as possible
October 27th, 2023 at 3:20 PM ^
The simplest explanation may be that Stalion's crunching probably yielded some kind of weekly report. He sent it or shared it with someone. How high up that might reach could be the critical question.
October 27th, 2023 at 4:31 PM ^
Agreed. If this guy is reputable then share his source with Seth/Brian as Sopwith has.
Harbaugh skipping a meeting with the NCAA just doesn’t make sense. Previous reporting indicates NCAA is here for longer than a day. Yesterday could have been a day set aside for talking to lower level staff members.
October 27th, 2023 at 4:47 PM ^
A suggestion: stop listening to anonymous message board trolls whose response to literally everything is PANIC.
October 27th, 2023 at 8:04 PM ^
Michigan fired Weiss immediately. Seems like they acted appropriately in that situation.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:02 PM ^
i wrote this elswhere, but i used to love the yahoo podcast. pat forde and dan wetzel are smart, funny people that realize how completely silly this entire sport is. even now, their takes on all of this are, if scold-ey toward michigan, not without eyerolls in the general direction of the ncaa, and ohio state, and all the other anonymous turds.
but dellenger, man. that guy was already driving me away from that podcast with his general smarminess...now, the craven "piss on their leg and tell them it's raining" approach to this entire fiasco, combined with his constant pearl clutching, have put me over the edge. dude is 100% full of sanctimonious pigeon shit.
October 27th, 2023 at 4:32 PM ^
Mandel is a full on Barstool-troll.
October 27th, 2023 at 5:01 PM ^
Similarly, I've found Andy Staples to be a good listen, usually. And when he does talk about Michigan's sign stealing he has noted that his interest is generally because it's fascinating and funny, and I can't argue with that.
But he seems very fixated on the idea that Michigan should be punished in-season (even though he doubts it will happen), and he keeps saying "because it moves lines," as in, betting lines.
I do not understand his point at all.
In his mind, what is the appropriate in-season punishment that actually impacts Michigan this year? Stalions is already gone. Can't even use him for legal sign stealing. Suspend Harbaugh? Postseason ban? Because this affects gambling? I'm lost.
October 27th, 2023 at 7:33 PM ^
"Because this affects gambling? I'm lost."
+1
Unless you're really good at counting cards, I consider gambling to be a tax on people who are bad at math. If you enjoy gambling on sports, great. It's harmless entertainment as long as it's not something that has become a problem for you.
But no. Anything that is considered a problem because it affects gambling is total crap. If it's the Black Sox where gambling affects the game, that's a problem. But that is a one-way street. Even if M's actions did affect the game scores, which it didn't, I have no sympathy for Vegas.
October 27th, 2023 at 7:46 PM ^
But that is a one-way street. Even if M's actions did affect the game scores, which it didn't, I have no sympathy for Vegas.
I would say even if it did affect the game scores, it should have been baked into the lines because it was simply part of our game preparation every week.
Also, the line with MSU was something like 24 when it opened up and went up to 24.5 or 25 before kick after the story first broke. So after we knew that MSU wasn't going to have signs for us to steal, people still bet on us to cover. Plus we beat the over...by ourselves.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:04 PM ^
If Michigan wants to serve up some self punishment, I wouldn't mind volunteering to send headsets to all our remaining opponents so we can just put this behind us. Would at least guarantee that nobody can complain we knew their signs.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:25 PM ^
Talking heads suggesting the "self-punishment" may be UM (Warde) suspending Harbaugh for the season.
Nah fam.
#FTheNCAA
October 27th, 2023 at 6:55 PM ^
Well gosh, if those guys aren't so darned helpful to suggest we fall on our sword for the final games of the season. How swell of them.
I am no longer in favor of self-punishment. If the NCAA has intentions, they can serve proper notice and it can get worked out through normal channels. Self-punishment just feeds into the mob mentality. F that.
October 29th, 2023 at 12:48 AM ^
Don't forget to renew the warranties
October 27th, 2023 at 3:04 PM ^
One minor-ish clarification on my Item No. 2: I should have said "No coaches/staff above him knew anything..." which does not absolutely preclude the possibility that there may have been lateral or trickle-down flow at his analyst level or below, but not upwards into the coaching ranks. Apologies for the confusion.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:57 PM ^
Thank you for your service, Mr. Sopwith
October 27th, 2023 at 4:09 PM ^
Give this man a million bazillion points!
October 27th, 2023 at 5:26 PM ^
Is there any credibility to this rumor that someone from Michigan “hacked” into other teams’ (aka Ohio State) Cloud drives to obtain practice footage?
I work with someone whose son is verifiably on the Ohio State football team. His son said they used to be able to view practice footage and film at home on tablets via a secure Cloud drive in seasons past - but for a some reason at the beginning of this season, the coaches announced they could no longer do that, and now the tablets only works on campus networks.
October 27th, 2023 at 11:09 PM ^
Doesn't that seem a lot more likely to be related to the Buckeye Scoop thing where an injured nth-string player sold practice videos to a blog? Don't remember exactly when I read about it, but it makes sense that it was between last season and this one, since this article from last October seems to be missing the source of the footage.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:05 PM ^
Contract extension. Get it done. This is clearly done just to get in the way of it. Trying to push the greatest man in college football out the door. Contract extension. Like, yesterday.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:06 PM ^
We've had "-gate" for decades, starting with Watergate. (Though "Watergate" was already the hotel's name, so in retrospect, shouldn't we call it Watergategate?)
Maybe it's time to square the circle—and / or the circus.
Because the reports opened the gates (water gates?) to a flood of hints and innuendo, maybe and instead of Signgate, we can call it Gategate!
October 27th, 2023 at 3:08 PM ^
It's... gate-ception man...
October 27th, 2023 at 3:07 PM ^
How much ad revenue does a "scandal" like this generate? Not insinuating anything, just curious. Is there a "click counter" out there that determines the number of clicks by topic? One would think there must be. I would be interested in knowing how much money has been made off of this (and other "scandals").
October 27th, 2023 at 4:17 PM ^
Nothing moves copy in sports media like a scandal, especially a cheating scandal. This is absolutely driving the drip-by-drip nature of the reporting.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:11 PM ^
Despite all of the distractions concerning the source and leakers, the question remains, regardless of whether or not anyone on staff knew about this or acted upon it: Did the alleged actions literally break a rule or not?
October 27th, 2023 at 3:13 PM ^
It does not appear so "as written" but no doubt some liberties are being taken as to the intent of the rules.
October 27th, 2023 at 4:36 PM ^
No. Stalions acted within the current NCAA rules.
See my lengthy posts on this to understand why this is true.
October 27th, 2023 at 4:52 PM ^
I saw it and it was excellent. I hope your interpretation is correct but have yet to see authoritative corroboration.
It's why I used the word "literally" in my post.
If you are correct, there seems to be no infraction.
October 28th, 2023 at 1:41 PM ^
Hoeg is authoritative on it. You've got a very competent lawyer showing you everything about it.
October 27th, 2023 at 3:11 PM ^
Jim Harbaugh said he and the coaches knew nothing … guess what they knew nothing and were not told anything!!! Day was right about hanging 100 only me thinks it will be Meeechigan inflicting the pain … you can guarantee that this year we won’t be running when up by 14 + in the fourth Q … we will be marching down the field passing it down their throats !!!
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