A short look at some bad business

I. THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STEALING SIGNALS ON GAMEDAY AND USING SIDELINE VIDEOS TO COMPREHENSIVELY BREAK DOWN AN OPPONENT’S ENTIRE GAMEDAY COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

 

Once you know what you’re looking for the actual gestures teams use to signal from the sideline aren’t hard to decipher: a muscle with the right arm for power right, a muscle with the other for power left; crossing one leg behind the other to signify “Trips” one way or another. Maybe something cockney clever like waving hands low to signify making a mess for ‘Mesh.’ You have to remember, the point of these signals is not to deceive, it is to communicate. 

How do teams compensate for this necessary obviousness? By obscuring the signal with copious amounts of noise. Multiple signalers, big boards with silly images on them that might shift to denote, for instance, which signaler is “live” at a given moment.

This is where the advantage gained in videotaping whole games of opponent sideline signals multiple times over the course of a season comes in. Match the sideline escapades to the All-22 film, and over time you’ll find out not just “What each signal means” (low hanging, easy fruit) but:

  • How a team denotes which signalers are live and which are dummies (e.g., when they shift the “key to the code” and even what comprises the full universe of alternate keys)

 

  • How and when teams denote changes in signals over the course of a game

The signal operation is a shared language in which dozens and dozens of people on team must be fluent given the extraordinary levels of ad hoc cooperation needed in a football game. Sure, teams can add some wrinkles in from week to week but it’s not like it’s practicable to switch from French one week to Farsi the next. At best a team can go from English one week to Pig Latin the next. 

If Michigan had Stalion grinding for untold hours illegally unwinding other teams’ entire comms operations, those opponents are left without much practical recourse. 

II. THIS TYPE OF SUBTERFUGE CAN PROVIDE A MASSIVE AND DECISIVE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

One of the natural rejoinders from rug-sweepers on this issue has been “So what? This kid was supposed to be sitting next to the OC or DC all game reading every single play?” To them I would say: no, of course not. That is certainly not the best way in which to lean into such an advantage.

This clip from The Imitation Game gets to the heart of the matter in three minutes.

The point of coming into a game with an opponent’s full communication system decoded isn’t so you can beat them in rock-paper-scissors 75 times in a row. It’s to be SURE you are going to win the decisive battles that determine the course of the game. These come in two varieties:

  • The first and more straightforward one would be on high leverage plays. You don’t even need to know an entire playcall. If before a big 4th and 3 you know whether the opponent is going to run or if they’re going to pass and you can get that simple alert word out to the defense, that’s all she wrote. Just pick the two or three critical calls to watch for and have the cheater in question stand by the OC or DC during a big game. He sees the key signal, he gives a hot word and you (the OC or DC) know the perfect call to make in a high leverage situation, every time. 

 

  • The other and probably even more advantageous factor is allowing Michigan to completely erase problematic schematic elements from the opponent’s gameplan. Doubtful your corners can hold up against a specific passing concept? Diagram a specific, perhaps-even-generally-unsound defense and create an alert for every time the opponent calls that concept. Viola! You no longer have a matchap problem and the opponent’s gameplan just blew a tire.   

III. THERE’S AN OBVIOUS AND CLEAR REASON THAT NO OTHER TEAM DOES THIS

It leaves an extremely obvious evidence trail and it is very hard not to get caught! That’s the whole reason we are here!

This shit is like insider trading. Everyone would do it if they could but they refrain because they know they’d very likely get caught. 

Michigan got caught red, red, red, red, red handed engaging in behavior that blatantly undermines the premise of fair competition. The Big Ten and NCAA should make an example of them.