Did Connor Stallions just go rogue?

This entire affair has me shaking my head for two big reasons. First in disbelief at how stupid and inept it was, and secondly from disappointment at how reckless and flat out inexcusable it all is. Stipulated that the rule is fairly silly and that the advantage gained is minimal. But that just points to how idiotic it was to do this in the first place. If it is all so dumb and unimportant, why was it important enough to risk getting caught and tarnish the program and the potential championship seasons when this has been happening? What's more, what kind of idiot blatantly schemes and suborns cheating like this and uses his own name and involves so many people that it is bound to come back on you? It's just stupidity on stilts, and not only shows the program to be willing to cheat for no good reason, but that it hires idiots to boot!

With that said, I don't want to give the impression that I think the problem is just that Michigan has gotten caught and looks dumb. The problem is that this was reckless and a blatant violation of the rules. All of the information gleaned by this moronic scheme can be gleaned without cheating. And by most accounts, the cheating offers very little advantage. So that raises the question, if Michigan is willing to take a risk to gain such a pointless edge as this, what are they willing to do for a real advantage? Now, if other questions pop up, it's much harder to just wave them away as baseless or the ravings of jealous opponents. What if rumors about Ben Herbert crop up and people start wondering if the results he gets from three star athletes is really on the up and up? Will you still just immediately give the program the benefit of the doubt? Can you reasonably expect people who aren't fans of Michigan to give credence to any denials?

Now, if it can be shown that this really was just one stupid staffer that went rogue, maybe a lot of the reputational harm can be mitigated, but not entirely. And honestly, this whole operation required some serious money that a low level staffer isn't just funding out of pocket. What's more, if the information he was gaining wasn't being used by the program, why would it go on for multiple years? The answer is that of course the information was being used, and of course Stallions wasn't doing this on his own with his own money. So, I find any argument that claims that people fairly high up the ladder weren't in the know to be naive or disingenuous. Andy Staples today reported that people had been posting on a Tennessee message board last season, well before any of these allegations came out, that family or friends had been given money by Michigan to do this type of scouting, and that they were to make sure that the information couldn't be connected to Harbaugh. We don't have some big rivalry with Tennessee. Why would a rando make that up? I would have dismissed it before all the other evidence came to light. Now I am willing to believe it could be true.

Bottom line, this is a bigger deal than most here are willing to believe. The fact that it probably has very little to do with the wins the program has had over the last few years doesn't lessen that fact, it actually makes the cheating worse because it was so unnecessary. And don't be surprised to discover that people higher on the totem pole than Connor Stallions get in trouble for this.