Various thoughts on scandal-type substance du jour.

Nothing important will happen. The #1 rule of 2023 college football is "the networks are in charge." The networks would have a conniption fit if Michigan was barred from the postseason at any point, this year or next. They would savagely eliminate any athletic department that had the cojones to not play Michigan because they may or may not have their signs. Michigan is the only football program in the country to support a completely independent college football blog that isn't mostly clickbait garbage. QED.

Sturm und drang; the only meaningful impact here is that the Michigan program will be inclined to bounce any rubble they come across. Michigan's play here should be the Kansas play: cooperate. Very, very slowly.

The most likely explanation. Pete Thamel has a name: Connor Stalions, an analyst with the team. A post on our message board is unconfirmed but comes from a guy who's been around here for 13 years and sounds like a plausible explanation:

The staffer recruited a bunch of non-Michigan affiliated 3rd parties to attend games and record sidelines of future Michigan opponents. That's the so-called "vast network." Wait until the story comes out of how he recruited the "scouts." It's Bud Fox level hustle that would make Gordon Gekko smile.

Obviously he'll lose his analyst gig at Michigan and probably have a show-cause if he ever wants to get near a college AD again but he's 100% going to land a plum job doing corporate espionage work eventually.

The Michigan Difference.

I bet a dollar this is substantially correct.

[After THE JUMP: meh!]

I fundamentally don't care. This isn't baseball, where some guys banging trash can lids is a Stain Upon The Game. This is football. A few years back ESPN ran a piece on Mike Leach—then the Oklahoma offensive coordinator—planting a fake playsheet on the sideline before the 1999 edition of the Red River Shootout:

"That game might've been the most bizarre experience I ever had as a college football player," said Ahmad Brooks, a starting defensive back for the Longhorns. "I can't tell you how wrong we were in the first three or four minutes with every playcall we had. I've never seen anything like it.

"It was complete pandemonium, and it was complete confusion."

Everyone thought this was awesome, because it was. One reason that college football has not adopted NFL-style radios in the helmets is that some coaches like stealing signals:

Another concern among some SEC coaches wasn’t expressed publicly but has been suspected privately: Headsets would eliminate the ability to steal signals. The concept of stealing signals is an open secret in coaching, and some programs have elaborate operations.

I'm not about to put on a hairshirt if Michigan is the best sign-stealing team in America. Change your signs, dumbass.

I've gotten bent out of shape about a bunch of things but they're all things that make people's lives worse: Alabama massively oversigning before transfers were free; Michigan State blithely ignoring all the red flags about Auston Robertson; being forced to watch Rutgers play football. Being better at calling football plays than other teams does not rise to that level. .The Astros doing whatever they were doing is great and I hope they win the next 200 World Series. Opsec is important.

Nobody else seems to care either. JJ Watt and RG3 both said this was a nothingburger…

Hey JJ Watt & RG3, what do you two think about this so called ncaa rule pic.twitter.com/CKVomVqiv8

— Dre Dre (@crispcorp1) October 20, 2023

…as did 247's Bud Elliott:

This idea that sending someone to steal signs at an opponent's game -- a game played in front of 80,000 people, is somehow unethical or immoral is .

It is only "illegal" because in the 90s a bunch of schools didn't want to PAY to send scouts on the road and passed a rule.

— Bud Elliott (@BudElliott3) October 20, 2023

Paul Finebaum, of all people, asserted on ESPN this morning that "If this had been someone else, this investigation probably would not have gotten to this point." The parties that do care are reporters desperate for clicks and rival fanbases who would like to cling on to a reason Michigan caved their heads in.

This is the best kind of scandal because it is deeply funny and does not matter at all. I mean:

Upon learning of the pending investigation, Michigan State initially warned the Big Ten it might consider not playing Saturday’s game out of concern for health and safety for its players, according to two sources briefed on those conversations. On Thursday morning, MSU confirmed it will play the game.

If there's a program in the M-MSU rivalry that should be concerned about the health and safety of its players because of the other team, it's not MSU.

The provenance of this and reporting on it is sketch. The first person to allude to this investigation was Ohio State insider Bill Greene of Buckeye Scoop, the site that was blackballed by OSU for paying a walk-on to give them access to internal Ohio State information. The message board rumors that started up a couple of days ago also came from OSU sources, which point's a big ol' finger at Ryan Day as the primary complainer. I do not believe the message board rumor that Ryan Day hired a private investigator to get at all this… but I kind of do.

This is also extremely funny, especially because I've got the odd Buckeye fan in my twitter mentions making ominous references to how this all started in 2021. DO YOU REMEMBER THE 2021 GAME? Michigan passed four times in the second half. OSU couldn't move the ball because Aidan Hutchinson was beating the ass of whoever he lined up over. Signals intelligence did not matter. 2021 may have been the game least likely to be affected by playcalls in the history of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. Call whatever you want, Ryan. It doesn't matter because Aidan Hutchinson is going to be beating CJ Stroud to death with the dismembered arm of the left tackle.

Then we have the Ominous Quotes. I'm not sure why Pete Thamel printed this unsupported accusation, but he did:

The allegations have rattled coaches and administrators around the Big Ten.

"This is worse than both the Astros and the Patriots -- it's both use of technology for a competitive advantage and there's allegations that they are filming prior games, not just in-game," a Big Ten source said. "If it was just an in-game situation, that's different. Going and filming somewhere you're not supposed to be. It's illegal. It's too much of an advantage."

"Rattled." FOH. Thamel goes on to detail Stalion's LinkedIn page, because that's a thing you do when you have a thoroughly sourced article. Brendan Quinn also has a dubious quote:

One source who was briefed on the allegation said Michigan is being accused of using a “vast network” to steal opposing teams’ signs.

We are legion.