The first Conner Stalions lackey to speak
--"a couple hundred dollars" and a ticket to a Michigan home game
--former Division 3 football player and coach
--uploaded the videos he took on his personal cell phone to a shared iPhone photo album
--was wary of Stalions' plan "to a degree" when he was first approached... but felt that if someone from Michigan's staff was asking him to do this that it must fall safely in the gray area of rules.
--"I just felt like if you're not doing it, you're not trying to get ahead."
FULL ARTICLE: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38758564/ex-d-iii-coach-says-u-m-staffer-hired-record-future-big-10-foes
October 28th, 2023 at 3:32 PM ^
Espn is always trying to shoot down the big ten in some way. They also need ratings and a juicy sensationalized cheating story is good. But Michigan moves the ratings needle across the country. Think about it, it went from some small report before the msu game to this entire week daily some bombshell drop and every former coach, current coach and beat writer, radio show, podcast has had segments on it.. ESPN loved the ratings cause why would anyone look up their articles during the week for anything or their daily cf show? Gameday, BigNoon, idk but I’m sure they discusssed it today.
October 28th, 2023 at 6:04 AM ^
Some interesting points from this article:
ESPN (this article is penned by Dan Murphy with contributions from Pete Thamel) seemed to have lightened up a bit on the egregiously against the rules take. "It is against NCAA rules for staff members of a football program to scout games of future opponents in person. The NCAA football rulebook also prohibits "an opposing player, coach or other team personnel" from recording an opponent's signals through audio or video. " They never report that this former DIII coach and player is a staff member, opposing player, coach or other team personnel. They also repeatedly refer to "gray areas" and "gray line".
'"A lot of people may say you can just rip that from the All-22 [wide-shot game film]. Well, it's not that easy," he said. "This makes it easier to mirror things up and get those tendencies."' In other words, Stalions scheme just made it easier to decipher signs from opponents games, but it is still possible to map signs to plays by using existing game film.
October 28th, 2023 at 9:44 AM ^
This makes me feel a lot better about the "vast criminal network" that is being run by Michigan. Even if the coaches knew this seems to fit within the gray area of the rules, but this definitely seems to point to the lone wolf theory.
Also, they keep bringing up this $15,000 budget for the year like it is some astronomical figure. Michigan's football budget for 2023 is something like $224m. Maybe I am crazy but this just gives me a pretty good sense that this is being funded by Stalions.
October 28th, 2023 at 11:06 AM ^
Man if they think this is another bombshell…but it’s just not. We already knew this was true. This is just more evidence that yes indeed, Stalions violated the rules. But that still does not mean the rest of the coaching staff was aware of this scheme. And until we see THAT bit of info, I’m not going to worry much about all this.
Let the haters say what they want. You still need some sort of evidentiary proof that it’s more likely than not the rest of the coaches knew about the scheme. And most circumstantial evidence points to the “rogue staffer” side of things (imo).