Repeat after me: “Code Cracking.”
We need to completely purge the term, “sign stealing” from our vocabulary as fans and—if possible—urge others to do so as well. It’s an implicitly negative term & immediately casts Michigan in a bad light regardless of the underlying facts.
Sure, WE all know the practice of trying to decipher opposing team signals is EXTREMELY common & perfectly allowable at the CFB level. Many of the third parties chiming on this know this already too. And yeah, the adjudicators at the NCAA won’t be overtly swayed simply by using a different term for the activity in question.
But like it or not….
It’s clear this thing is going to be partially waged in the court of public opinion. Many casual/non sports fans that’ll be following this story won’t necessarily realize that deciphering opponent signals in & of itself is perfectly legitimate in the sport. And even if they don’t admit it, it might even marginally help sway some NCAA adjudicators in some subtle ways.
Language matters.
This is *especially* true in chaotic media environments where nuanced arguments are particularly difficult to convey. So to cut through the noise, not only should we wholesale dump the phrase, “sign stealing,” we should also broadly adopt a single term that both accurately describes the activity & also removes any sigma associated with it.
Michigan wasn’t, “sign stealing.” They were, “code cracking.”
THAT’S how this activity should be referenced from now on 100% of the time: “code cracking.”
People will still hotly debate the specifics of the methodologies used, the meaning of various NCAA rules, and how it applies to Michigan’s specific case of course. But as Michigan fans, what nobody here should endorse is people casually throwing around the term, “sign stealing.” Not only does it needlessly muddy what’s already a potentially complicated case, it also unfairly prejudices Michigan in the court of public opinion before the full set of facts can even get presented.
October 24th, 2023 at 8:55 PM ^
Let's just call it "Trolling Ohio"
October 24th, 2023 at 9:06 PM ^
Let's just call it, "winning."
October 24th, 2023 at 9:27 PM ^
Just not Charlie Sheen “winning”
October 24th, 2023 at 8:55 PM ^
Ok. Is this the same as when AC Slater code cracked his name to abnormally cool?
October 24th, 2023 at 11:42 PM ^
MAKE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE.
OVALTINE?? Its a god damn commercial.
Ive noticed that most radio show talking heads are saying it sounds bad because they all keep saying it sounds bad. As if we cracked the code on seeing a coaching staff in front of 100,000 people is some super secret thing. This has to be the dumbest shit ive ever heard. THE COACHES ARE GIVING SIGNALS IN FRONT OF 100,000 PEOPLE! WTF is the secret????
October 24th, 2023 at 8:56 PM ^
Crack coding.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:00 PM ^
Nah. Football players just call it scouting.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:04 PM ^
Excuse me while I engage in a wee bit of Turing.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:08 PM ^
Ok. I’ll tell Thamel.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:31 PM ^
Feel free to use any other choice words for him as you see fit.
October 25th, 2023 at 5:26 AM ^
After this first cup of coffee, I am going to sit on the throne and take a hot steamy Thamel,
Am I doing this right?
October 24th, 2023 at 9:14 PM ^
This is what i said in the other thread too, its completely baffling that people keep using "stealing" as if its private speech.
It's the deaf person equivalent of shouting.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:18 PM ^
In your case, “Diary Deciphering”.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:22 PM ^
Yeah.....how about Advanced Scouting. Better depiction of what we were doing and more accepted in all sports while only being banned in the NCAA for budgetary reasons.
I am still skeptical that stealing signs is all that helpful unless teams really are dumb enough not to rotate them.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:25 PM ^
Eh... it's more about Advance Scouting (which is just as reasonable as it sounds, despite being forbidden by an anti-camera-team-road-trips rule from 1994).
While we are at it, let's stop saying "Scandal" and use the word "Drama" instead. It's not a scandal. It's a few adversaries and their accomplice talking heads being dramatic.
"Advance Scouting Drama"
is what I think we should be calling this.
So, something like, "More news in the #2 Michigan Wolverines Football advance scouting drama today, as blah blah blah...."
October 24th, 2023 at 9:26 PM ^
It was a big part of defeating those nazis that our spartan brethren seem to like referencing. #enigma
October 24th, 2023 at 9:27 PM ^
Not to be a dick, and I didn’t scroll down, but the rule is about in person future games scouting. Sign stealing is legal, so the language should not matter to anyone other than public opinion The problem is in-person future scouting. Which is a ncaa crime: Which is admittedly stupid, because the rule was about cost saving. And change your signs! But it’s still a problem for us. Very tainty. (Like gonna taint all our good works)
October 25th, 2023 at 2:54 AM ^
I can't imagine that this isn't a common practice. Advanced in-person scouting. Anyone who thinks this isn't happening everywhere is either crazy, has an anti-UM bias, works for the NCAA...or all likely all 3.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:29 PM ^
Code Cracking!
If teams are stupid enough to not change signs….THAT’S ON THEM!
October 24th, 2023 at 9:33 PM ^
I was seriously just thinking about this. I came up with “signal intercepting”.
It is important not to say stealing because that implies it was illegal, and it isn’t.
Obviously we all know the real issue is the in person advance scouting but I do think it’s important because people are running with the narrative that the intercepting was somehow an unfair advantage. The advantage from scouting on an iPhone in public in a 100,000 person stadium is next to nil, and the intercepting is perfectly legal.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:42 PM ^
It’s kind of like the American Medical Association trying to change ‘physician assisted suicide’ to ‘medical aid in dying’. It’s the exact same thing, but words impact perception. It still doesn’t change what happened with Michigan, and the AMA cannot change the Hippocratic oath.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:51 PM ^
Such a binding document.
October 24th, 2023 at 9:46 PM ^
Devin Gardner used Sign taking on Monday, I like yours better
October 24th, 2023 at 9:53 PM ^
On my phone so I can’t embed, but if I could embed, I would embed George Carlin Soft Language from You Tube
October 24th, 2023 at 9:59 PM ^
I would embed RGard's mother.
October 24th, 2023 at 10:06 PM ^
“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be good manners”
-George Carlin
October 24th, 2023 at 9:58 PM ^
Crack sniffing
October 24th, 2023 at 10:05 PM ^
Sign scouting
October 24th, 2023 at 10:36 PM ^
I'm thread-jacking a bit, but can we start a KickStarter to raise $1mm for definitive proof that another B1G school was doing the same thing that we have been accused of doing? I would actually like to do this multiple times just to show how widespread this likely is...
October 24th, 2023 at 10:36 PM ^
Careful that could lead to arthritis in old age…
October 24th, 2023 at 10:39 PM ^
Michigan is guilty of being an absolute juggernaut.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:03 PM ^
Let’s just call it therapy. It’s not night drinking, day drinking, simpathy drinking or a coping mechanism.
it’s therapy.
welcome to my ted talk
October 24th, 2023 at 11:07 PM ^
Although I *think* this post is in jest, you never f***ing know with some people.
I cannot possibly express the level of contempt I have for people who think that if you just say different words or words in a different order it somehow changes what has happened.
I don't care about sign stealing at all. Nor how it was done. I only care if there end up being penalties that materially affect the program. Changing the words changes nothing in that opinion.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:08 PM ^
Hmm, Michigan's sign stealer is from Lake Orion and his OSU counterpart, Brent Zdebski is from Walled Lake.
Is this like some southwest Michigan lake community code talker thing?
October 24th, 2023 at 11:17 PM ^
The NCAA and apparently college football in general think theft of signals is fine, but certain methods are not approved of.
The lack of understanding or concern for ethics or sportsmanship is truly astonishing to witness.
October 24th, 2023 at 11:35 PM ^
October 24th, 2023 at 11:33 PM ^
You are MGoBlog’s George Orwell with that treatise on the importance of language in shaping perceptions. I propose neither “sign stealing” nor “code cracking”. I propose the inestimable Michael Barrett’s characterization. We, being in the ass-kicking business, were by virtue of observing our opponents, just “calibrating” said ass-whoopings.
October 25th, 2023 at 12:04 AM ^
Yep -- what it's called matters a lot. I feel the same way.
October 25th, 2023 at 12:17 AM ^
More like Day breaking
October 25th, 2023 at 2:40 AM ^
Stealing is a stupid word for this and totally a negative connotation for what you’re describing. And people are acting like it’s hacking and FBI and Weiss and it’s getting a bit ridiculous. If that’s the case: staff is illegally accessing electronic information, the FBI would press charges and well…it just isn’t that. So ridiculous.
October 25th, 2023 at 6:45 AM ^
Sorry, double post.
October 25th, 2023 at 8:15 AM ^
Honestly what does it matter? The rules specifically prohibit future in-person scouting. Michigan did that. They broke the rule. End of story.
Yes there are other things that can still be called into question: to what extent did Harbaugh and the staff know or have any kind of inkling that this was happening? Was Stalions a lone wolf who never told anyone on staff how he did this and kept it all to himself? Was he reimbursed by the university? And yes, the only reason this rule was enacted was for cost-saving, not because it violated the sanctity of the game. And there is no listed punishment, that I'm aware of, for breaking this rule.
So maybe its a stupid rule, and yeah, OSU only cares about any of this and about "protecting the sanctity of the game" because Michigan is the one who did it. But again, its the rule. In my mind, Michigan is going to get punished. The only question now is how bad will it be? The answer to that depends on the questions I laid out above, but if anyone on staff knew anything about this, Michigan is in for a world of hurt.
Honestly if this post was coming from the OSU end we'd all be laughing our asses off and would believe they were grasping at straws
October 25th, 2023 at 9:00 AM ^
I agree with you, although I wish that I didn't. Andy Staples posted this last night:
https://twitter.com/Andy_Staples/status/1717000265704886690
This not so little scheme apparently included in-person scouting of potential CFP opponents in addition to B1G schools. The travel and ticket costs continue to add up and in the above tweet from December '22 the poster claims that "They paid for him to travel..."
Obviously it remains to be seen who "they" are but as much as I'm trying to keep this thing in perspective and focus on the positive, this thing seems to keep expanding in scope. I am no longer confident that Connor paid for all this of this stuff on his own and wasn't reimbursed by somebody higher up.
October 27th, 2023 at 9:01 AM ^
'Signals intelligence' seems like the right term to me.