Just wanted to drop my thoughts on this sign stealing investigation that NCAA has launched on Michigan.
Will preface this by saying I have no inside knowledge of the details of the investigation or what went on.
However, I am struggling finding a way for any of this to add up.
First off, and I think many have made this point, but the schedule Michigan has had so far this season wouldn’t seem to warrant any additional scouting that is beyond the bounds of the film that is given to the teams to prepare for the games at hand. Which begs the question, even if Michigan wanted to go out of its way to bend the rules and do some in person scouting, why in the world would you do it against ECU, UNLV, Bowling Green, Nebraska, Minnesota, Rutgers or Indiana? The risk wouldn’t seem to be worth the reward even if a program thought about pushing the gray area of the rules against teams they are way better than.
Secondly, even if the in-person scouting allegations were true (I again have no knowledge to how much validity the allegations have), how in the world would you be able to identify a Michigan staffer in 60,000-100,000 person stadiums? It’s not like they are setting up recording equipment at midfield in Michigan gear. Even if a staffer were sitting close to the action in the stands and got their phone out to record, I don’t know how that would set off any alarms compared to just regular fans around them who pull their phones out to record part of the games to capture the experience.
The competitive advantage that would be gained by doing such a thing would seem so marginal, and things are not seeming to add up about any of this. It will be interesting to see what further information comes forward.
Side note: I know people have resurfaced the Schiano video where he brought up at halftime that there were things going on in that game that “weren’t right,” and I am assuming he was referring to some type of sign stealing now that this info has come to light. But it’s important to remember that just because he thought Michigan was picking signs during the game doesn’t mean someone had to go scout Rutgers in person to do so. Often, defenses will pick up on certain tendencies, motions and signals that offense do during the game, that’s not uncommon. It’s then up to the offenses to adjust to make it so defenses can’t pick up on tendencies so easily. When Gattis was the OC, I remember a specific play where every time Michigan did a certain type of motion, they would run the same play every time, and teams picked up on it. Point is, just because defenses are diagnosing plays doesn’t mean there is cheating necessarily going on, there’s such a thing as film study and reading tendencies.
Will preface this by saying I have no inside knowledge of the details of the investigation or what went on.
However, I am struggling finding a way for any of this to add up.
First off, and I think many have made this point, but the schedule Michigan has had so far this season wouldn’t seem to warrant any additional scouting that is beyond the bounds of the film that is given to the teams to prepare for the games at hand. Which begs the question, even if Michigan wanted to go out of its way to bend the rules and do some in person scouting, why in the world would you do it against ECU, UNLV, Bowling Green, Nebraska, Minnesota, Rutgers or Indiana? The risk wouldn’t seem to be worth the reward even if a program thought about pushing the gray area of the rules against teams they are way better than.
Secondly, even if the in-person scouting allegations were true (I again have no knowledge to how much validity the allegations have), how in the world would you be able to identify a Michigan staffer in 60,000-100,000 person stadiums? It’s not like they are setting up recording equipment at midfield in Michigan gear. Even if a staffer were sitting close to the action in the stands and got their phone out to record, I don’t know how that would set off any alarms compared to just regular fans around them who pull their phones out to record part of the games to capture the experience.
The competitive advantage that would be gained by doing such a thing would seem so marginal, and things are not seeming to add up about any of this. It will be interesting to see what further information comes forward.
Side note: I know people have resurfaced the Schiano video where he brought up at halftime that there were things going on in that game that “weren’t right,” and I am assuming he was referring to some type of sign stealing now that this info has come to light. But it’s important to remember that just because he thought Michigan was picking signs during the game doesn’t mean someone had to go scout Rutgers in person to do so. Often, defenses will pick up on certain tendencies, motions and signals that offense do during the game, that’s not uncommon. It’s then up to the offenses to adjust to make it so defenses can’t pick up on tendencies so easily. When Gattis was the OC, I remember a specific play where every time Michigan did a certain type of motion, they would run the same play every time, and teams picked up on it. Point is, just because defenses are diagnosing plays doesn’t mean there is cheating necessarily going on, there’s such a thing as film study and reading tendencies.
