NCAA FB 2023

[sancarlos]

[tennbengal]

It really is quite something

[Shirley]

Good for UVA.

Worst team in decades. Gets program's first road win over a top-ten team. Sports

[govmentchedda]

Good for UVA.

Worst team in decades. Gets program's first road win over a top-ten team. Sports

After the shooting, and that unfortunate touchback, I was really pulling for them at the end.

[rass]

Connor Stalions, huh?

[Nonlinear FC]

Connor Stalions, huh?

Adult film star... MI super fan... (dude finally gets put on the staff after 6 years of volunteering/paying his way to attend away games/sleeping in his car so he can rent out all of the rooms in his house)

He fucked up royally, but all these folks with "no way he did this on his own" are just seeing what they want to see here. This guy was ABSOLUTELY capable of buying tickets and giving them to his friends/MI superfans over the course of 3 years.

This will result in a large fine and Stalions getting officially fired. And probation for the program. That's it.

[A_B]

It's mindboggling to me that at no point did harbaugh think "how are we so good at deciphering their plays?"

[sancarlos]

It's mindboggling to me that at no point did harbaugh think "how are we so good at deciphering their plays?"

Or…??

[Nonlinear FC]

He's such a weirdo, he might've thought scouting and preparation and gumption got it done.

This fucking team are such nerds. The player of the game gets a rousing round of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow sung at him for cripes sake.

[EnochRoot]

Harbaugh (or handlers) are smart enough to keep him a couple of degrees away for plausible deniability's sake.

[govmentchedda]

Harbaugh (or handlers) are smart enough to keep him a couple of degrees away for plausible deniability's sake.

Pretty sure the new(ish?) NCAA rules don't allow for the head coach to say he didn't know about it.

[Nonlinear FC]

Absolutely true, chedda.

That said, given what they've done with other violations, I'll stand by what I posted:

Stalion shown cause, AD pays a very large fine, program is placed on probation.

[tennbengal]

Harbaugh (or handlers) are smart enough to keep him a couple of degrees away for plausible deniability's sake.

He's not going down for RICO...

[rass]

The posters were ahead of this story

[Shirley]

I haven't been following this story that closely - is there an NCAA rule against this?

[govmentchedda]

Yes. You can attempt to steal signs during a game, but I think recording your opponent beforehand in person is a no no.

[Nonlinear FC]

The wrinkle, and where MI will probably try to drag this out on technicalities:

Staffers aren't allowed to travel to away games to do any kind of scouting, let alone shoot video of their sidelines/signs. They also can't pay a 3rd party vendor (scouting service) to do in-person scouting or filming.

The gray area here is that the MI staffer paid for his friends to attend games and do the taping. Very shady and against the spirit of the rule. But a tiny bit of wriggle room.

[Giff]

Nowhere in the rules does it say I can't strap a GoPro to the head of my service dog.

[govmentchedda]

[sancarlos]

I can’t link this because it’s from the News app on my iPhone and I don’t have a Washington Post subscription, so I’ll just post an excerpt here.

Michigan’s sign-stealing operation is a college football scandal to savor

(excerpt) …So if the crime in question is commonplace, and the cops sent to punish it entirely Keystone, why is this a big deal at all? Why have so many in the industry, myself included, met this particular NCAA transgression with such mirth?

Because it’s Michigan. Because it’s Harbaugh. Because this is the single entity that’s sworn, screamed and evangelized that everyone is cheating but them, that Michigan is not only the only one doing it the right way, but the only one capable of it.

“It’s hard to beat the cheaters,” Harbaugh famously told Michigan hagiographer John U. Bacon. Bacon used the quote, in reference to Harbaugh’s opinion on recruiting in the SEC, as a chapter header in his hilariously titled “Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football.” I guess we figured out which way they crossed.

For decades, Michigan positioned itself against the cultural and economic changes in the sport, no matter how obvious or uncomfortable, as better-than. If Michigan was successful, it was setting the impossible model of competing with the Alabamas on the field and the Ivies in the classroom. But as the Bowl Championship Series era dawned in the late 1990s, the Wolverines became also-rans after making bad coaching hires both too outsider and too insider.

Rather than self-examine, Michigan’s sizable, moneyed fandom maintained that the success of programs such as archrival Ohio State and the heathen SEC were tainted by compromised morality and NCAA rule-breaking. While those programs hoisted trophies, Michigan boasted merit badges for a morality it alone defined. When you can stare directly at the widespread practice of millionaire coaching staffs breaking rules by dropping thousands of dollars to athletes living below the poverty line and cry foul because of the letter of the NCAA law, it’s evident your excess privilege has choked off the morality centers of your brain.

Then came Harbaugh, another native son, but one with an unimpeachable résumé of elevating Stanford, a brutally tough academic school, into a dominant Power Five program. Like any master politician, Harbaugh knew where his base was starving and amped up the “cheaters” rhetoric to both explain away his early struggles and justify the excessively slow pace the Wolverines took to returning back to national prominence.

The problem is now that Michigan has been made great again — the Wolverines are arguably the best team in the nation entering this weekend — it can’t do the one thing Michigan has staked its entire identity on: claiming the moral high ground.

The exposure of Stalions’s hilariously overorganized sign-stealing campaign comes on the heels of Harbaugh serving a three-game suspension for NCAA violations during the coronavirus pandemic recruiting “dead period,” as well as refusing to cooperate with the NCAA during that investigation. During his absence, Michigan players held up four fingers on the field to … honor (?) Harbaugh in a gesture that made it seem as if their coach had passed away and not simply been pinched for run-of-the-mill recruiting no-nos. Following his return, Harbaugh publicly promised a new “gold standard” for Michigan compliance with NCAA bylaws, a public attempt to reinstate his piousness.

Well, that lasted a month.

The real and unavoidable punishment for the Wolverines is in progress and will play out in the coming weeks: the asterisk rivals and media alike will attempt to pin on a potential national title season. As of now, Michigan is in a frantic race between now and January to undo the morality value prop it’s foisted on the sport for decades, and at least right now, it feels impossible it’ll escape the dreaded “Yeah, but” response that could haunt this team’s potential title forever.

If that happens, Michigan will serve out a worst-case scenario it itself defined: another big-time winner who did it the wrong way. That the Wolverines could experience the pinnacle of success without telling you how different, or refined, or apart from the chattel of this sport they are, is a fate worse than losing to Ohio State.

It’s just sign-stealing, though. All the cheaters do it.

Steven Godfrey is a national college football writer based in Nashville and is the co-host of the “Split Zone Duo” podcast.

[brian]

Godfrey roots for the SEC which has taken cheating in CFB to an art form. I guarantee at least half the schools in the SEC have similar operations.

[govmentchedda]

Godfrey roots for the SEC which has taken cheating in CFB to an art form. I guarantee at least half the schools in the SEC have similar operations.

You're proving his point.

[brian]

It’s a bullshit point though.

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Fuck that. And fuck anyone clutching their pearls

[brian]

Godfrey roots for the SEC which has taken cheating in CFB to an art form. I guarantee at least half the schools in the SEC have similar operations.

You're proving his point.

I have more respect for the pundits (and coaches like Prime of all people) saying it’s a bullshit rule instead of ginning up a giddy hardon.

[Rex]

[rass]

It’s a bullshit point though.

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Fuck that. And fuck anyone clutching their pearls

Including, previously, Harbaugh. That's the point.

[rass]

Need Teddy Bear Picnic looped over that video

[govmentchedda]

[A_B]

WHAT WAS IT?!?!?!? The suspense!

[govmentchedda]

How not to get caught by Bud Elliott.

[HaulCitgo]

Bc vs uconn is exactly what you would expect. Feel terrible for the 6 people in this bar

[brian]

Indiana +32 turned out to be a good bet.

[brian]

That Kansas/Oklahoma game was about as fun a five hour game as you’ll ever see. Unless you’re an Oklahoma fan I guess. Considering OU and KU might not play each other for a few more decades that one’s gonna be remembered in Lawrence.

[DSafetyGuy]

Under 30 achievement unlocked (bottom game, second column left to right).

[sancarlos]

Funny. Northwestern games have averaged 48 total points.

[brian]

God bless the Big Ten West.

[A_B]

God bless the Big Ten West.

Is the seven team tie chance still in place? Have to find it on the Sickos.

[Brontoburglar]

God bless the Big Ten West.

Is the seven team tie chance still in place? Have to find it on the Sickos.

no. at the risk of giving people answers in swampcrash, I won't explain why

[brian]

The Drive for 325 is dead. Iowa fires Brian Ferentz though they’re letting him finish the season.

[mister d]

When I got fired from Party City, they offered to let me finish my shift so I said "ok" and then left out the back door a few minutes later. I hope he does the same. And I hope he's not wearing a ninja costume.