B1G coaches "urge action" from Tony Petitti

I’m just preparing for the worst. I look for the big to step in and do something, at some point. All the coaches are screaming from the rooftops. OSU has no shot to win it all this year and we’re realistically the best chance for the conference to win a championship. I don’t think that will be enough in the end. Once again, innocent players and staff don’t deserve that. Who TF knows anymore. But if that numb nuts was at the CMU game I’d say that’s the final nail. 

You're tacitly assuming that schools with big war chests (thinking principally of OSU here) don't already do the same thing. There are a lot of those in the Big Ten.

Consider: This might just be a good opportunity for them to #*$& over Michigan. Even if the lesser-endowed schools realize that, it probably wouldn't bother them that much.

Dude- it wasn't tattoos it was drugs.  

It was more than tattoos.

I don’t think that the NCAA should come down hard on Michigan. I honestly don’t know what the precedent would be for this, but the right answer is they should reinstate OSU’s wins from that season, because I agree it’s stupid they had to vacate.

Ohio State vacated the 2010 season because Tressel lied to the NCAA about knowing about the tattoos. 

I guarantee if he had just been upfront about it, they would have suspended players, deducted some scholarships and that would have been about it. 

If its true that this did not go above Stalions, I expect he will be fired, Michigan will be on probation and Jim Harbaugh might get a suspension. The Big Ten might fine Michigan. Michigan may lose some scholarships, but that will be about it. 

A few tattoos?

"Earlier this week, "Outside the Lines" spoke to a former friend of (Terrell) Pryor's who said Pryor netted anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 in 2009-10 for signing mini football helmets and other gear."

"But last year (2009), the auditors reviewed car registrations of 152 (OSU) athletes and observed vehicles driven by football players to spring practice. Auditors found that 44 athletes bought parking permits for, received parking tickets in, or were seen driving cars that weren't registered."

They're required to show the school the registration, who is making the payments, etc. to establish ownership. Almost 29% of the football vehicles were "gifts" from boosters.

"Wiping out the wins, which includes a Big Ten championship and Sugar Bowl victory, is part of the university's response to an NCAA Notice of Allegations submitted on Friday.

In it, Ohio State is admitting major violations but does not suggest losing scholarships or receiving a postseason ban because no other school official other than former coach Jim Tressel was aware of the transgressions."

They played ineligible players, lied about it and were forced to vacate all their wins.

Ohio State vacated its entire 2010 season because of a few tattoos. Ohio State didn’t get any better at football because a handful of players were tattooed, and yet that was the penalty. So what do you expect the penalty to be in this case?

I'm ignoring the rumor about drugs. It wasn't tattoos. It was that Tressel didn't report credible compliance violations up the chain of command, knowingly played players all season that he knew would have been ineligible had he followed the rules, and then repeatedly lied to the NCAA throughout the investigation afterward.

Not to mention OSU was paying players long before it was legal. Is that not at least an incremental advantage?

osu had wins vacated because it *systematically lied* to the ncaa about various advantages it was using in recruiting and retaining players (the tattoos among them).  Had they been honest when asked about them and self-imposed some punishment, they likely would not have been vacated.

I think this would be a lot easier for all of us to discuss in a meaningful way if at least one coach would explain it. Ideally, we'd have coaches publicly saying not only that this NCAA defined minor violation is a grievous violation, but also explain in detail how 1) sign stealing itself is an outsized advantage and 2) the knowledge gained by in-person scouting is significantly impactful beyond legal sign stealing.

So far all we have are a bunch of anonymous coaches saying, without explanation, that it's just the worst most unfair thing ever. Pardon me for not assuming these coaches don't have some other agenda in their responses.

Bob Stoops is the only current or former coach who has come out and said (paraphrasing) "This is craziness, no one has ever done anything this brazen before," but he did not say that it created a significant advantage that must be addressed.

All the other current coaches on the record have basically said what Jim said: You shouldn't break NCAA rules, that's bad.

Now all that said, I have been less pollyanna than others in regards to what kind of punishment we'll be getting. Like you said, it's reasonable to think it could have been enough of an advantage to swing a one score game, of which we had several in 2021-22. So I don't rule out the possibility of vacated wins coming. I also care less about that than others.

In terms of punishing Michigan for this year (where we have yet to have even a four score game I think, maybe as close as three? and beat MSU 49-0 without them using signs) we are already serving a punishment. We lost our sign stealer guy for the rest of the year (remember, sign stealing is legal and most teams have a sign stealer guy). Plus other teams, if they're smart, won't use signs anymore (use wristbands you nitwits!) because they all know that we key in on that. Of course they already knew for the last two years, so they didn't really learn anything new about us in the last month.

A survey of 50 coaches the athletic did found that over 70% of coaches thought it was a meaningful advantage

Yes, and they have a motivation to say that. I don't understand where people are getting this idea that an anonymous polling of coaches means that they're going to be a neutral party giving a neutral opinion. Everything in college football is interrelated

If the polling wasn’t anonymous, you would get different results… probably because many of those coaches also are involved with stealing signs.  Also, a “few” former coaches and players?  I’d say it’s everyone who has been asked and had to put their name on the statement… minus everyone that has something clear to gain by blowing this up.  How do you account for the NCAA almost repealing this rule a few years ago because of minimal competitive advantage?  

The poll is worthless because we have no idea how that pool of coaches was chosen. Did The Athletic contact 500 coaches/analysts? 1000? 2000? Were these the only 50? 

Plus, there has been a huge discrepancy between active coaches speaking in public and behind closed doors. What active coach has said anything close to any of the comments in that article?