Every accusation is a confession. I probably don't need to inform anyone reading this blog that Larry Lage has an AP article out on Michigan opponents colluding to decipher their signs:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — A former employee at a Big Ten football program said Monday it was his job to steal signs and he was given details from multiple conference schools before his team played Michigan to compile a spreadsheet of play-calling signals used by the Wolverines last year.

He spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, fearing the disclosures could impact his coaching career.

The employee said he shared with Michigan the documents, which showed the Wolverines’ signs and corresponding plays, after his school faced the Jim Harbaugh-led program in 2022.

The person also passed along screenshots of text-message exchanges with staffers from a handful of Big Ten football teams with Michigan, giving the program proof that other conference teams were colluding to steal signs from the Wolverines.

John Bacon tweeted that Rutgers and OSU gave Purdue Michigan's signs before the Big Ten title game, which is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Richard Johnson and Pat Forde had some additional details and confirmation in an article late last night:

A former Big Ten coach at a rival school in recent days forwarded to the Wolverines copies of two single-page documents listing Michigan’s deciphered signals, three sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed to SI. …

A source familiar with the contents of the documents verified their authenticity. The two Michigan signal breakdowns include sections devoted to deciphering the boards held up by staffers with images on them; lengthy lists describing hand signals for running plays; slightly shorter lists for passing plays; and separate lists describing signals for play-action passes. A Michigan source confirmed that the signals described corresponded to their 2022 play calls.

This article goes on to state that "schools sharing signal information is not uncommon in college football, multiple sources in the coaching profession told SI, nor is it against NCAA rules," but… I mean… isn't it?

Whichever programs end up getting named here are executing the exact same sin that Michigan is accused of: in-person scouting of future opponents. In Michigan's case it's randos with iPhones in the stands. In the other Big Ten schools' case, it's employees of Big Ten athletic departments handing over processed intelligence on Michigan's signals to future opponents of Michigan. Kind of sounds like the latter is worse, but drawing fine distinctions is beside the point. If a Stalions guy in the stands is illegal in-person scouting of an opponent, someone literally on the sideline of a Big Ten program forwarding information on to future Michigan opponents is the same thing. And if it's "not uncommon" it's hardly the greatest scandal in the history of the Big Ten.

Also arguing against the disproportionate response: all these teams had Michigan's signals. Even if Stalions had some advantage from his scheme, Michigan's opponents had the same. Michigan still beat these teams. Whatever competitive advantage Stalions provided was negligible. The appropriate thing to do is give Stalions a show cause, fine Michigan for the trouble, institute helmet radios as soon as possible, and move on with our lives.

[After THE JUMP: silly season]

I don't believe you. This is from a WSJ article and contradicts expectations virtually everywhere else:

A person close to the Big Ten has said the conference will defer to the NCAA, which is conducting its own investigation. Such probes often take months if not years.

FWIW.

I also don't believe you. Sometimes a journalist will look at the rules and write some stuff that is technically accurate but has no basis in reality, and, well:

The Big Ten Sportsmanship Policy spells out a wide range of potential penalties aside from a suspension of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, according to documents obtained by CBS Sports, as the sign-stealing scandal remains ongoing.

The penalties range from a reprimand to probation to a possible TV ban. Other potential penalties include withholding TV and bowl game revenue from the university. As part of those penalties laid out in Rule 19.5 of the sportsmanship policy, a "staff member" can be suspended.

The TV conference isn't going to suspend the TV team, and there's been no suggestion it would other than this article. Dodd is just listing out all the penalties in the document. It is a deeply funny thing to think about, though.

Why I don't believe the first I don't believe you. McMurphy:

Michigan has received notice from the Big Ten indicating specific sign stealing allegations but it does not indicate what penalties would be administered, UM sources told @ActionNetworkHQ. UM has until Wednesday to respond to Big Ten, source said. The Big Ten’s pursuit of…

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) November 6, 2023

So if Michigan has until Wednesday to respond it seems like Thursday is the earliest possible moment something could be handed down.

Containment shield intact. Per Dan Wetzel and Ross Dellenger, the NCAA has notified the Big Ten that there is nothing linking Harbaugh to Stalion's actions:

The NCAA’s findings do not connect the in-person scouting and recording of opponents’ sidelines to Harbaugh, sources say, an absence of evidence essential to a potential lawsuit from the school and coach against the league.

Over the weekend, the school was given a period of several days in which to mount a response to the conference before penalties, if any, are levied, sources with knowledge of the discussions say. A resolution around the issue is expected by the end of this week and as soon as Wednesday.

The rest of the article is mostly a rehash but we do get another confirmation that the lawsuits will flow if the Big Ten tries to suspend Harbaugh, and the authors note that the coach responsibility bylaw the NCAA recently passed is not a Big Ten policy:

Any suspension of Harbaugh is expected to be met with legal action from both the coach and school, multiple sources tell Yahoo Sports. School officials have held ongoing conversations around legal action tied to a significant fact in the case — that there is no documented evidence that Harbaugh was aware of Stalions’ NCAA rule-breaking.

While under NCAA bylaws head coaches are presumed responsible for a staff member’s actions, the Big Ten sportsmanship policy does not feature such a clause.

The policy holds “institutions,” not head coaches, as “responsible for, and therefore, may be held accountable for, the actions of its employees, coaches, student-athletes, band, spirit squads, mascot(s), general student body and any other individual or group of individuals over whom or which it maintains some level of authority.”

The Lage article should further clarify that there would be no reason to believe that Stalions was exceptionally adept at sign stealing because of his off-book activities. Multiple Big Ten teams were conspiring to get all of Michigan's signals over the course of the season. Even if Stalions did have a team totally downloaded, it wouldn't seem weird to a Michigan program that is facing teams that have totally downloaded them.

OSU: better at this than we are. Dellenger also has an article stating that the NCAA says there is no evidence of a connection between Ryan Day and the sign-stealing probe.

I don't think this changes much. OSU sources were the ones who had this a month before it broke and it is 95% likely that OSU, in some nebulous capacity, is the source of this. That could be someone getting wind of the Stalions Army and shoving it over to a booster, or it could go all the way up the chain but get executed with good opsec.

As the last post noted, if random guys on the internet know what the firm's name is it will come out sooner or later, and then the world will go over it with a fine-toothed comb.

Anybody want a vacuum? This WSJ article is about Connor Stalions being weird:

I did not think the Conor Stalions story could get funnier. @lainehiggins17 has proved me wrong. https://t.co/xXiacFUfeu pic.twitter.com/iaci6cKRee

— David Ubben (@davidubben) November 7, 2023

Apparently the vacuum thing didn't go so well. Stalions ended up with a seller rating of 2.8 on Amazon.

This article is useful in a few ways. One: seems like the bank of mom and dad theory is at least partially correct if Stalions is buying a half-million dollar house on a 55k salary. It also further confirms that Stalions was the kind of guy who would embark on a ridiculously time-consuming plot with little regard to rules or the eventual payoff of that plot. It seems like that was his whole life.

How are we almost ten years into Harbaugh's tenure at Michigan and there is apparently no vetting being done on these hires? There is no way a proper check of who this guy is would not have turned up buckets of red flags.