“Stealing is okay, but a method is not.”-NCAA
I feel like I am screaming in the woods as no one seems to care that the NCAA bylaws fail to address actual theft of proprietary information and focuses only on a method used to commit deed.
This is akin to arresting and charging a burglar for using a crowbar in the commission of a burglary rather than for the act of burglary itself.
If there was really any concern over the integrity of the game the bylaws would also forbid signal stealing outright(regardless of the near impossibility of preventing that). But they don’t which to me says a lot about the concerns over the integrity of the game.
This is just another example of the ethical rot at the core of this sport.
October 25th, 2023 at 10:51 AM ^
Honestly, Urban probably didn't know it was a rule either when he said that.
Everybody does this. Most of them probably don't even know that you can't do it.
October 25th, 2023 at 10:19 AM ^
The origin of the rule isn't related to the ethics of "stealing signals." It's making sure that everyone can do it in the same way. Some schools couldn't afford to send scouts to other games so the NCAA leveled the playing field by saying no one can send a scout to a game. Fine. But let's not act like this is some breach of a canon of ethics and Michigan is some immoral offender.
October 25th, 2023 at 10:37 AM ^
Which is my point. NCAA is fine with theft of signals aka competitive advantage. It’s just the method used that Michigan is being raked over the coals for.
NCAA and the schools are not much concerned with ethics or integrity of the game so calling Michigan a cheater is very much bullshit.
October 25th, 2023 at 2:53 PM ^
You're getting caught up on the word stealing. It's not bad because nobody is actually stealing any property from anyone.
It's like stealing a base in baseball. It's a 100% valid accepted part of the game. It's not stealing like the crime of theft.
But if you take steroids to make you run faster when stealing a base, that's cheating.
October 25th, 2023 at 10:48 AM ^
Even in 1995 pretty much every P5 team could afford it and today pretty much everyone in FBS and many outside could. The real story here should be how out of touch NCAA rules are with the reality on the ground in a sport that's as big money as major college football.
Michigan's 'crime' would only be a 'crime' of any note if no other team had any ways to view Michigan's games and sidelines to get our signals.
Imagine thinking that a rule of "please do not watch any of your opponents' games which are publicly played in major venues in front of five or six figure audiences and broadcast on TV" in a sport where teams spend millions of dollars every year to get a competitive advantage is in any shape or form feasible and sustainable.
October 25th, 2023 at 10:28 AM ^
I was always more of a Method Man myself.
October 25th, 2023 at 10:55 AM ^
I'll take your analogy a step further. It's like they are arresting and charging a burglar for using a crow bar instead of picking the lock. Had he merely picked the lock, it would have been legal.
October 25th, 2023 at 11:24 AM ^
Football coaches love to steal signs. They view it as a big part of the game.
October 25th, 2023 at 11:27 AM ^
Also, stealing during championship games or tournaments is fine. Per 11.6.1.2
October 25th, 2023 at 11:37 AM ^
This isn’t unusual. There are crimes relating to use of a gun, including burglary. Burglary itself requires forced entry, otherwise it’s just larceny. Sex is legal, but not if done by drugging the other person. Sometimes the method of doing something is what makes it problematic.
I’m not saying that the NCAA rules make sense, but I understand wanting to limit how something is accomplished.
October 25th, 2023 at 11:37 AM ^
This isn’t unusual. There are crimes relating to use of a gun, including burglary. Burglary itself requires forced entry, otherwise it’s just larceny. Sex is legal, but not if done by drugging the other person. Sometimes the method of doing something is what makes it problematic.
I’m not saying that the NCAA rules make sense, but I understand wanting to limit how something is accomplished.
October 25th, 2023 at 12:19 PM ^
if you're sending signals in plain sight of your opponent, they're going to look and attempt to decode....
what would be next? prohibiting defensive players from watching the QB's eyes in attempt to determine where he's going to throw the ball?
October 25th, 2023 at 12:45 PM ^
If you’re the NCAA, you simply can’t prohibit “sign stealing.” It’s impossible. If I look at another team’s signs and discern the pattern, I can’t unlearn what I’ve seen. Accordingly, if I’m an assistant coach who does the same, I *must* be allowed to benefit from that knowledge.
For that reason, if there is to be any regulation at all, it has to focus on the method. I don’t begrudge the NCAA for doing that. Here, however, they have done so unclearly that no one can say for certain whether a coordinated effort by non-staff employees to capture cell phone video of other teams is actually impermissible.
My view is that the NCAA has created an unworkable mess. These are games open to the public and recorded from many angles by thousands of people. The signs at issue are displayed for everyone to see. There shouldn’t be any issue at all with any team filming all of that (whether by staff or otherwise) and using it however that team wishes. If an opposing team wants to keep their own signs safe, it should change them. Michigan puts its own signs on laminated sheets before each game, so that they can change them whenever they wish. Other teams could do the same thing, and many no doubt do.
Here’s the problem if the NCAA tries to make an example of Michigan over this: First, it would do so even though its rules don’t clearly apply to the conduct at issue (as we know it today). Second, murky rules or murky interpretations of rules aren’t good for anyone. If experienced attorneys (of which I am one) cannot say with certainty what the actual scope of the rule was intended to be, it’s a bad rule. People can “misinterpret” a bad rule in good faith, eve if their interpretation is aggressive. Third, because football contests are public and widely-recorded, every team should be presumed to have access to any view of any moment of any game. This is not an “everybody does it” excuse, because it goes directly to the issue of whether this was wrong in the first place. In reality, teams that want the information Michigan had (presumably all of them) already probably have it, regardless of method. It would only affect a team’s competitiveness if the information *isn’t* used.
October 25th, 2023 at 2:48 PM ^
You're getting caught up on the word stealing. It's like getting mad at an umpire for calling a runner out when they tried to steal a base by running outside the dirt.
Yes, stealing bases is perfectly valid when running on the dirt. It's an out if you run outside the dirt. It's not that complicated we all learned this in elementary school.