Michigan staffer accused of sign stealing allegedly used 'illegal technology,' bought dozens of tickets
I don’t see why stealing signals is a problem. I’m sure every team “scouts” their opponents. Not sure how you can prove it isn’t happening everywhere.
Well the conference needs to police it, but even then it’ll just be fines that fill their coffers. It won’t stop teams from scouting.
To me it’s seems kinda like counting cards in a casino — if you can do it discreetly that’s one thing, but don’t be obvious about it. This dude bought tickets to 30-something games and flew all over the place literally spying on opponents over a span of at least 3 years. And he got caught — time to make an example out of totally unethical behavior
I suggest giving the article below a read. It does suggest what you're saying, that most teams are probably doing some degree of sign stealing. But what Michigan allegedly did still violated multiple NCAA rules that other coaches were adhering to. 'There's honor amongst thieves': What college football coaches say about legal and illlegal sign stealing
I always laugh when articles say Michigan employed a "sophisticated sign stealing scheme" or something to that effect. If it was so smart and sophisticated they wouldn't have been caught. It's not hard to blend in to a crowd of over 70,000 people.
I mean, if you can get a guy on second base and he can see the signals it’s part of the game kind of. You can’t have a guy in centerfield with binoculars banging on a trashcan though.
In person scouting has been illegal for a long while.....I think this is the issue in this case: Other teams think that they are being scouted in person (perhaps on their own side of the stadium) to decipher their signal process.
The referees aren’t even true professionals. The biggest problem with that is that there are not 120 something teams that need legit officials. They need to get rid of a dead weight and break it down to 30 or 40 teams and actually spend money on officiating only for them.