Amicus brief - any SignGate experts want to fact-check and suggest citations?

Is it worth it to mention these 2 items?

Baylor had an assistant coach who scouted opponents in person. He was suspended for 1 game, which was imposed by the university and accepted by the NCAA. The B1G is at 3 games (and counting?).

From what I've read, the NCAA has no punishment guidelines for this circumstance and in 2021 was urged by the NCAA Legislative Committee to strike the rule, citing there was "minimal competitive advantage."

https://web3.ncaa.org/lsdbi/search/proposalView?id=106069

IANAL caveats, as always, but with respect to showing the likelihood the University/Harbaugh will ultimately prevail on the merits in order to justify the PI, does it make sense to attack the core premise of illegality of Stalions' actions, also?

The NCAA and B1G's entire case against Stalions and, ultimately, Harbaugh, rests on two assumptions about the relevant NCAA rules:

1. The ban in-person scouting extends beyond athletics personnel to non-university-employees.  In my nonlawyer reading, it appears that is not the case, and the rule is limited to coaching staff (at minimum) and athletics personnel (at max).

2. Seth's argument re field equipment: it's illegal to record the opposing sideline from the field during your own games. That section of the rules is inapplicable to conduct from the stands at games that your team is not participating in.  If recording from the stands was illegal, every All-22 film in existence, and every shaky iPhone shot from the bleachers would be an NCAA violation.

If Harbaugh/UM are deemed reasonably likely to prevail on these points by a preponderance of the evidence standard, that's one more checkmark in favor of the injunction.

This may be a dumb question, but could submitting this hurt Michigan/Harbaugh in any way? I have no clue what an Amicus brief is so just curious.

Has the identity of the committee that had to vote to suspend Harbaugh for 3 games (beyond the 2 the commissioner can do alone) been confirmed? If it’s true that it consists of two PSU, one OSU, and one NW voting member, to me that is strong evidence that extraordinary, unusual punishment is biased by the relevant interests of the members of the committee. 
 

I’m surprised there was less in here than I expected about the ridiculous claim that this is not a punishment of Harbaugh. To me, that really shows the capriciousness of the B1G here: they *wanted* to punish Harbaugh, but when the Michigan response letter correctly pointed out that the Sportsmanship policy did not allow a punishment of Harbaugh, only the Institution, for Stalion’s actions, the B1G shifted at the last minute to the claim that a punishment of a named individual is actually a punishment of the institution that employs him. This fits a pattern of “show me the man and I’ll find the crime”, a pattern that has been obvious since they asserted the “sportsmanship policy”, rather than the more facially appropriate but less arbitrary “section 32” in the first place. The B1G did not approach the issue from a clear theory of their own authority and an appropriate “charge” against Harbaugh and Michigan, rather they shifted their own position and interpretation of their authority to dodge Michigan’s objections. This is like allowing a prosecutor, having been eviscerated by a skilled defense, to change the charges against the accused in his closing statement. 

And why the rush? Given that the supposed mastermind of the “sign-stealing scheme” is no longer with the team, and his role has not been refilled, and teams are now aware of Michigan’s tactic and can easily subvert it, there is no ongoing harm. Any punishment is inherently after the fact in this situation - the B1G has done nothing to show why punishment *now*, with no due process, is even necessary. Certainly the rush to judge makes errors in determining the appropriate punishment much more likely. The B1G could just as effectively suspend “the head coach” next year (Michigan will have one, but it might not be Harbaugh, and there, I suppose, is the rub) after a more complete and coolheaded investigation and review of the facts.

I know this is probably covered elsewhere in the document, but the “safety of the players” claim must be attacked mercilessly. As fans, we have witnessed injuries in all types of game situations. We have witnessed dirty play and cheap shots. And there have been calls from all parties (fans, players, organizing bodies) for increased player safety for decades. NEVER, before this latest instance, has “sign stealing”, which again is fully acknowledged to be legal and common except when combined with certain proscribed methods of scouting, been mentioned as a safety hazard. At no point has the B1G conference made ANY effort to curb this “dangerous” practice, despite tactics and technology to end it completely being readily available and indeed used at other levels of play. This again demonstrates the bias and capriciousness of the B1G’s actions, claiming in obvious bad faith that a significant harm is occurring due to the “sign-stealing scheme” when this supposed hazard has apparently been ignored in all previous cases. 
 

Finally, I would expect an amicus brief of this type to contain more language about why we, as alumni, are impacted by the unfair actions of the B1G here. That seems like another good thing to crowdsource, and probably more powerful than just regurgitating arguments that have already been made by Michigan and Harbaugh. Plus we can make the excellent point that “a lawyer alumnus made a blog post that got subsumed into Harbaugh’s legal motion” demonstrates our deep connection to and interest in the story. 

Brief looks good.

In terms of argument, if you can fit in a reference to an “arm-pit fart” in some way I really think it would be effective.

https://apnews.com/article/michigan-big-ten-sign-stealing-7b8bf1c599791b8d695d0d7b2676d4f8

CS resigned per university spokesman via AP.  No other details.

And, I am not an attorney/lawyer.

This is awesome, thank you for doing this.  A couple of things:

1. Stalions was at best forced to resign and not outright terminated.  I'm not sure how broad the term "fired" can be, but you might walk that back a tad just to keep focus elsewhere.

2. Love that you're consistently pointing out the ability of our rivals to directly hamper Michigan via the Conference.  

3. On the Sportsmanship angle, can it point out the irony of the conference not only allowing but encouraging Ohio State and Penn State reps to vote Harbaugh out of games against their schools' teams under the guise of upholding sportsmanship?  Same for parroting MSU' AD completely baseless claims with regard to player safety.  Nothing could be less sportsmanlike than using a buffoon in power to directly weaken your rival for your own competition against them.

4. You may want to use this letter to join the chorus of voices pointing out that none of this issue has anything to do with player safety.  If a team is not allowed to decipher opponent signals on those grounds, the Big Ten should be moving to cancel football altogether.  Signs are shown in public and thus by definition cannot be protected, the public and unprotected nature of signs is compelled by college football rules via the banning of in-helmet communication systems, and deciphering of opponent signs is common at all levels of competitive football to the extent that it is literally part of the sport.

The hypocrisy and the idiocy of the Big Ten 's written stance on this topic is laid bare by the facts that (1) the Big Ten states that "signs are permanent" and can't be easily changed, (2) the Big Ten claims that deciphering opponent signs puts players at risk of injury, and (3) all of Michigan's signs have been 100% deciphered by their opponents' professional scouts and coaches, and those signs have been routinely shared by Ohio State with Michigan's upcoming opponents.

Michigan's "permanent" signs are now available to the general public on the internet; the Big Ten is silent on this issue and is thus operating at the very peak of hypocrisy when it makes claims linking player safety to knowledge of opponent signs & signals.  Are Michigan athletes the only humans the Big Ten will choose not to protect?  Of course not.  The Big Ten's written stance is just fundamentally flawed in a way it is choosing to ignore in order to inflict maximum punishment on Michigan.

good luck i suppose. my completely uneducated, act like a lawyer on the internet take is that an amicus brief is more likely to be counterproductive than helpful because it's more work for the judge

Can’t leave a comment there for some reason; is it helpful to add that the claim of “sanction against the university” by suspending its head coach is blatantly a false one? Suggesting an alternate approach may be helpful? 
Fines, etc? NCAA consideration of its reversal due to its own acknowledgement of the minimal competitive advantage gained? I feel like that’s the strongest argument in writing from an unbiased third party

Your analysis on the rules that also appeared in Mars’ letter was good. But there is something about this whole introduction that I don’t like. It reads like a fan posting (e.g., saying the other coaches threw a “tantrum” the conference bowed to) and not a legal document. Just my opinion. The facts are okay (I see now that it’s been changed to Stalions resigned), but the tone seems like it should be altered to be a bit more emotionally impartial so that the legal bases for our position shine brighter. 

Im no legal scholar or anything, and I appreciate the effort and care, but this seems very weird and kinda silly to do, sorry.

Let the pros on the case handle it. I don't think the fans need to be doing this.This is the type of stuff that keeps UM losing in the court of public opinion. 

Curious that the document leads with the directions of "DO NOT QUOTE OR CIRCULATE" yet it is on a public website that is known to be heavily frequented by persons likely to be working on both sides of this case (and the general sports media as well).

At this point, the NCAA hasn't yet determined whether any rules were actually violated, so Michigan can't possibly be guilty of anything unsportsmanlike at this juncture.  It's that simple.

I'm not a lawyer.  I'm an engineer.  We operate solely on evidence and logic.