Questions on "StalionsGate"

I think likely the dude was just grinding to get a staff position with UM and unintentionally broke the rules. Intentions or not, if he broke the rules he broke the rules, even if there was little to no impact on actual game outcomes. This wouldn't matter at most other schools, but the NCAA wants to hose Harbaugh for anything and everything and I bet this will be trumped up as a major violation that will likely cost the program dearly. 

While I hope that nothing major happens as far as punishment, I will say that Michigan needs to step up its compliance game.

First, you had the Schembechler Twitter scandal and now this. An employee who is tech savvy should be in charge of continuous vetting of potential and current employees.

What benefit all this may or may not have provided to the coaching staff is completely irrelevant.  From an NCAA perspective, their only concern is did someone associated with the program advance scout (attend games of future opponents) VIOLATION!!! And is there proof that it happened and can they prove Harbaugh knew or any coach knew?

Is it possible that Stalions bought tickets people to attend those games with no mal intent?  Not trying to be naive, but could someone who is supposedly good at decoding, be smart enough to coordinate a bunch of people to gather intel at all these schools, and find a way to use it, but dumb enough not cover his tracks or even smart enough to not make it so obvious.

And he has been doing this for 3 years, but has only been with the program for 1.5 years. So it is being theorized that he was collecting the data for 1.5 years to prove he should be hired?  Wow, weak argument, but the NCAA has punished schools for more with less.

A couple of comments:

1.  Stealing signals is NOT illegal in and of itself.

2.  Teams are not using the Enigma machine to encode and decode their signals.  These by definition are simple codes - plays are called by the OC, transmitted to the sideline code guys and signaled in to the QB who then decodes them and calls the play, all of this in seconds.  You don't need Alan Turing to break these codes.  I would think they could be broken in a matter of minutes if teams had a dedicated analyst to work on them.

There is a reason every sideline coach covers hit mouth when speaking - just where are all the lipreaders hidden.

This whole thing will boil down to this:  Was the loophole that he exploited a loophole in the eyes of the NCAA to be "patched" immediately in the bylaws, or was it a direct violation of the rule.  Every other point is moot:  dumb rule?  moot.  Marginal advantage?  moot.  Everyone does it?  likely true, but moot.  lone actor?  moot.

If the NCAA disagrees with his assertion that he found a loophole, we're probably screwed to some degree and it would come down to a Level 2 vs Level 1.  

If the NCAA says, "we think you knowingly violated the spirit of the rule and we're disappointed, but we're dropping the charges due to the wording of the rule," then we're golden.  

I find it VERY hard to believe that, legal or not, other teams haven't tried this (if, in fact, there is any material advantage gained).  We should immediately scour ticket records and search for others who have tried this in our stadium.  Perhaps other teams are just better at covering their tracks.

To answer your questions:

1.  Probably didn't need an electronic device.  Sounds like the kind of guy who immersed himself in knowing the opponent, their tendencies, weaknessess, and where they pose the most risk. Given his internal motivation, he probably studied/analysed the opponent well enough to instinctively know what the tendencies were.  

2. You are correct about the difficulty of operationalizing a response to stolen signals in the timeframe of one play.  Probably the best he could do is identify a high leverage situation where the opponent play is a large risk given the defense called (and call timeout). It's not about stolen signals as much as it about the analysis of opponent situational tendencies.  These predictive elements become part of the game plan and weekly meeting/practice content.  This is the NFL level analytics I suggested in another thread, and sigint is just another input.

3. This sloppiness indicates an individual actor rather than a conspiracy.  Every other program wishes they had such motivated staffers.  The butt hurt NCAA won't see it this way, but most others aren't trying hard enough.  Unless there is evidence of electronic comm or sigint gathering on game day, the staffer scouting in person, or reimbursements for expenses by the program, there is no actual rule being broken.  There is just someone trying harder, just like satellite camps, sleepovers, and workouts with recruits.

EDIT:  As several have mentioned, the other area where this type of intelligence gathering provides a large competitive advantage is self-study; when the analytics are used to identify weaknesses and tells in your own program, and changes made to mess with the other team.  There is no rule against self-scouting (yet).

1) Standing next to them (which I believe someone noted he has) or using other illegal means of in-game communication.

2) This really doesn't matter as far as the investigation goes. I don't know how much it matters competitively, but I would guess less than a lot but more than nothing.

3) My guess is he wasn't paranoid enough to think it would ever be investigated.

A lot of these tickets can be written off by the fact he wasn’t on staff. Having OSU vs PSU tickets isn’t a good look. The whole fucking thing isn’t a good look and quite honestly wasn’t needed the way we’ve played. 

To OP's third question:

What's really bugging me at the moment is that OSU [1] is doing this more smoothly and effectively than we are. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. They're a well-run football program.

[1] There's no way in hell OSU doesn't also do this. Same goes for Alabama et al.

I’m just concerned about how aggressive the NCAA gets with any vacating of wins… win #1000 (which should be in the next few weeks hopefully) AND the all time most wins could all be in jeopardy. Michigan is at 997 right now, with OSU and Alabama at 959 and 953

If they weren't being payed by Stalions, I wonder how many of them them bothered to show up, even with a free ticket to the game. Will be interesting to find out. 

Are all potential NCAA violations now being tried in the Court of Public Opinion and X (formerly Twitter) now?

If True, this guy is just as crafty as Jussie Smollett. Ya don't write checks maaaannn!

Your point about him having to stand next to the coordinators is invalid, because it's in theory possible he taught others what the signals were or even he was just a middle man getting the info.

This objectively looks bad for UM and while I was on the fence earlier I'm going to admit it's not a good look.

At the same time, I just don't care anymore.  Bill Self and Wade are still coaching, PSU got their wins returned, etc.  I don't think Harbaugh knew what Stalion was doing but somebody did, and so my guess is UM gets some level of punishment below vacated wins but somewhat substantial punishments beyond that.  But I don't give a shit what OSU, MSU, and PSU fans have to say and the fact a bunch of them are running around without a moment of introspection says about all you need to know about their internal consistencies.

Another comment -

Do teams not change their code, or at least the key to the code, from game to game?

Instead of "StalionsGate," this nonsense should be referred to as Wyld Stallyns. (Apologies to the Millenials and Gen Z folks who have no idea what I'm talking about.)