Good Day Grover Pickers,
“If you ain’t cheatin’ you look like an idiot.”
– Darrell Waltrip, NASCAR Champion
Viewed through that lens, this man looks innocent.
Now sing this to the tune of the “Hail, Victors”
Jail!, To the Victors Cheating
Jail!, To the spying weirdos
Jail!, Jail!, to Michigan
The Dummies Who Got Caught!
– Michigan Fight Song (Modern Mix feat. Lil’ Liar)
Michigan football has won 997 games, the most of any college team since the invention of mechanical clocks in 1270, give or take 30 years.
Without an upset between now and November 18, 2023, Michigan’s expected win over Maryland that day will make the Wolverines the first football program, professional or unpaid-professional, to win 1,000 football games.
“Football is like war. It’s about taking territory” – attributed to Condoleezza Rice on the internet, so maybe.
“Football is comedy.”- The Commissioner
Connor Stalions, a former Marine, a Michigan recruiting analyst, considered a low-level employee, is a hard-charging football-wannabe. He is alleged to be writing a ‘Michigan Football Manifesto’ that is currently 600 pages long, outlines the future of the program, and uses data built around the experiences of 500 Navy football players.
Michigan suspended Stalions this week. As a former actual warrior, he may have reverted to his Marine training and treated football as war. He is accused of spying, a legitimate war tactic. The NCAA may have rules against such conduct. NCAA rules are not always clear, consistent, or enforceable.
The NCAA “Rule”, like all NCAA rules, is designed to ‘create a level playing field’ by ‘lowering costs’ and build a framework for competition where common sense and cheating are indistinguishable.
The rule says a college football team may not scout opponents in person and may not use electronic devices to record the opponent when they do scout them in person. The ‘in-person’ part is what allows the rest of us to watch our rivals on TV and then post about what we saw on the internet without becoming felons.
The only reason you and I know about any of this is because a ‘former Michigan coach’ and a booster who allegedly hates Jim Harbaugh because Harbaugh won’t let him hang around the program have leaked the information. So one of them wants to uphold the fabled integrity of Michigan Men and the other is just petty and spiteful.
Comedy.
From the Washington Post via Nichole Auerbach:
“In total, these people said, Mchigan’s sign-stealing operation expected to spend more than $15,000 this season sending scouts to more than 40 games played by 10 opponents.”
“Among the pieces of evidence the outside law firm presented was a detailed schedule of Michigan’s planned sign-stealing travel for the rest of this season, which games Michigan scouts would attend, and how much money was budgeted for travel and tickets.”
Jim Harbaugh says he did not know about or direct any of this activity. We can agree that there are so many things that Jim Harbaugh does not know.
The Vols knew. Tennessee Volunteer message boards actually broke this story last year.
A @VolquestOn3 poster dropped the dime on all this in December.
The Michigan Athletic Department may have known. In January of this year, please recall the University of Michigan announced …
“The University of Michigan has fired co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss amid an investigation into alleged computer crimes inside the football team’s offices on campus.”
Comedy.
What did Jim Harbaugh know and when did he know it?
How come Harbaugh’s one losing season was the covid year when there were no fans allowed in the stands?
Is Harbaugh done at Michigan? (Yes, more on that later.)
Is this really cheating? Why even have rules?
How come all the guys with NFL experience (Deion, Matt Ruhle, Chip Kelly, Harbaugh) seem so unfazed by the alleged spying? (Hint: They have all used a form of the solution proposed below.)
Did the Big10 not invite Stanford to join the conference just to avoid the Stanford Band’s award-winning halftime show making fun of Michigan? If so, I hereby ban the Big10 from the College football playoff for cowardice and award their spot to the ACC.
Is Michigan just better at cheating than other Top 5 programs? Alabama once paid Albert Means’ high school coach $150,000 to sign Albert. The coach graciously gave $60,000 of the payment to Albert. Albert played at Memphis and kept all of Alabama’s money.
The low level recruiting assistant who was suspended by Michigan is named Stalions. If I was writing a novel about football cheating, I would not name my protagonist ‘Stalions’, too corny even for me. Unless… it’s an homage to the SMU Mustangs!
SMU had NIL before it was cool. A month after the NCAA put the Mustangs on probation for building a sophisticated and well documented system for paying players in 1985, the team restarted the payroll with over $65,000 in payments the next month! Pro football Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson will still not confirm if he was given a free Trans-Am, but he was.
If football is like war and if, as The Commissioner says when quoting himself, “Football is the most important unimportant thing”, then it should be full of cheating.
Look at all the cheating in sports that are much less important!
- Astro’s bang garbage cans to signal pitches just to win silly little baseball games.
- NBA referee Tim Donaghy made up foul calls to win bets he made on games. Of course, nobody could tell if he was on the take or just another incompetent official.
- Lance Armstrong replaced his blood everyday so he could ride a bike!
- The Montreal Screw Job- never forget when Vince McMahon cheated Brett Hart out of the World Title in Canada. Never mind that McMahon wrote the scripts and wrestling endings are pre-determined. Outrage!
- Pitcher Danny Almonte won the Little League World Seres as a 14-year-old 12-year-old.
- Serial Fraudster Rosie Ruiz who took the subway to win the New York City Marathon.
- All East German Female Olympic Athletes .
- Joey Chestnut is accused of cheating at competitive eating! There are accusations of reduced weiner sizes to pad his numbers.
Even a Michigan Man understands cheating at weiner size. A Michigan Man also understand the value of conniving to gain advantage in a game based on war through a conspiracy to out-work and out-prepare their opponents, especially if Ohio State had beaten Michigan 8 consecutive ties.
The Solution
Technology is the solution. Duh.
AT&T created a new 5G football helmet for Gallaudet University. Every player on that team is deaf. So, they are very good at hand signals, maybe the best, and even Gallaudet has found a better way.
From AT&T Marketing:
The helmet is designed to allow coaches on the sideline to select a play from a tablet that will send the play to a lens inside the helmet. The quarterback wearing the helmet will receive the play in augmented reality on the digital display located within the visor. AT&T 5G provides the reliability and low latency for plays to be sent and received at a speed that keeps up with the pace of the game.
I assume you could use emojis on the digital display so, for instance, Miami could have emoji of a knee to indicate the quarterback should take a knee and win the game instead of running a hand-off.
If college football implemented these helmets today, then new cheating would begin immediately. However, to cheat at 5G, you have to be good at 5G.
Here are the top universities for 5G development that you can expect to be in the college football playoff soon:
- Texas
- Cal
- Stanford
- Surrey University, England
- Technical University, Dresden
- NYU
- Cornell
(this is an actual list created by a 5G scientific magazine called 5Gbuzz or some such inconsequential name.)
Granted, two of those schools are in Europe, so they’ll have to move. NYU doesn’t have its own football team. Maybe they can borrow the Jets. And, not surprisingly, the conference with the most experience and skill with 5G cheating will be the ACC!
Oklahoma v Kansas
This week ESPN has mentioned Oklahoma coach Brent Venables as a suspect in illegal sign stealing for Clemson when they lost to LSU in the National Championship in 2020. According to the story, Venables may be very good at decoding signals during games as well. Good luck, Jayhawks.
Clemson v NC State
So what does Dabo know about this Venables thing? And if Dabo is such a traditionalist that he doesn’t support NIL and doesn’t support the transfer portal, wouldn’t that make him a leading advocate of the college game’s more traditional cheating methods such as cash-in-the-glove-compartment and no-show summer jobs?
It’s important to note Dabo’s coaching tree when it comes to considering his affinity or affliction to cheating. He idolized Bear Bryant, played at Alabama, coached with a Bowden, supervised alleged sign-stealer Brent Venables, and is known as an excellent recruiter. That doesn’t make him a cheater, it makes him “a” suspect, as opposed to his team, which is just “suspect”.
Georgia v Florida
Charlie Pell.
It’s fair to say he came to Gainesville at its lowest point. The facilities, to use a technical term, “sucked”. Not, “This weight room isn’t state-of-the-art” sucked, more, “This weight room features a broom with coffee cans hanging on each end and that is for the bench press” sucked. And the team was 0-10 that season.
Charlie Pell was the fixer. He learned at the foot of Bear Bryant, which I mention only to impeach the legacy of Bear Bryant. He gave out the original ‘Pell Grants’. He and his staff broke 107 NCAA ‘rules’, including spying on other teams’s practices, handing out cash and loans to athletes, and letting walk-on players stay in athlete dorms.
The next coach was Galen Hall. He had to leave after he used his own money to supplement assistant coaches salaries (for you young people, assistant football coaches did not always make $1,000,000 a year) and using his own money to make child support payments on a player’s behalf.
Noble, but impermissible.
Michigan, if you are looking for a ray of hope, the next Florida coach was America’s Favorite Football Coach Steve Spurrier.
Auburn v Ole Miss
It’s still not clear how much cash Cam Newton’s dad got for the church building fund in return for Cam transferring to Auburn.
If Auburn were actually important, we’d spend more time investigating the Pat Dye era. He’s another Bear Bryant disciple.
According to the NCAA, Auburn has cheated at football, basketball and tennis. The first violation was 1957. Cash, inducements, lack of institutional control. The loveliest village on the plains is a lawless outpost.
Both of these schools have employed Hugh Freeze. Only one has suffered NCAA punishment under Freeze’s tenure so far, but, read above about Auburn’s institutional history and, if you are a Tiger fan, tell me you feel good about anything.
Bonus points: Bruce Pearl.
Florida State v Wake Forest
Free Shoes University. The best deals on stolen TV’s are in Tallahassee!
Again, was this cheating? Or, was it, as lovable, duplicitous, buffoon coach Bobby Bowden said, “Just boys being boys?”
Wake Forest is the smallest school in the Power 5, so it’s easy to forget they are part of the biggest cheating scandal of this century and in this case they were the victim.
Wakey Leaks
Color commentary man Tommy Elrod, a former Wake coach who was not retained by a new coaching staff, had access to everything the Deacons were planning each week and decided he would call his buddies at other teams, including Army, Louisville, and an assistant coach at Virginia Tech named Shane Beamer, and give them the Deacons plays and signals for that week!
Wakey Leaks is the scandal Ohio State fans (and the rest of the Big10 teams that cannot currently compete with Michigan such as Michigan State) wish was happening in Ann Arbor.
USC v Cal
Reggie Bush wants his Heisman Trophy back. He forfeited it in 2010 because USC was ‘convicted’ by the NCAA for paying players such as Reggie Bush. After NIL became a thing, Bush asked if he could get the trophy returned. The NCAA said “No.” Reggie is suing the NCAA now. Was it cheating then, but not cheating now? Was it not cheating then, but we just didn’t know?
BTW- OJ’s Heisman Trophy is still on display at USC.
Tennessee v Kentucky
Former Kentucky coach Bear Bryant was brilliant. He was also an athletic director, so he would give out tennis scholarships and swimming scholarships and ping-pong scholarships to men who were actually football players, thus circumventing the scholarship cap for football. Was it cheating? Well, there’s a rule against it now.
Jeremey Pruitt. Mistake.
He played for Gene Stallings at Alabama, so that’s another direct connection to Bear Bryant. He coached with Rush Propst at Hoover (AL) High School. Rush was a man who turned out to have two separate families who were unaware of each other. He was also adept at using his pen to alter grades and eligibility because football is important!
On his own, Coach Pruitt oversaw the payment of $60,000 (not even SMU mid-80’s level proper!) to recruits parents, among other things. So Pruitt was dishonest AND cheap.
The NCAA remarked on Tennessee’s ‘exemplary cooperation’ with their investigation, which means Tennessee had figured out that Pruitt was a mistake, clipped all the bad news to him, and said “We’re so sorry, we had no idea.”
Ok.
Colorado v UCLA
Colorado’s football history has a number of ‘paying-recruits’ violations and ‘providing strippers for recruits’ violations. They also have some serious, dark, Baylor-level crimes in their story that involve mishandling rape and assault accusations against numerous football players.
Like war, football must avoid civilian casualties.
Ohio State v Wisconsin
Sorry, the Colorado stuff got serious. And Colorado is far from the only place that stuff happened. Say what you will about The Ohio State University, but the Buckeyes are famous for acceptable transgressions.
The Buckeyes had a coach punch an opposing player on the sideline during a game. They also got some free tattoos one time and the coach got fired. That, Bobby Bowden, is ‘Boys being Boys’, in case that is any defense.
Who believes these are the only and most egregious violations perpetrated at The Ohio State University?
Saints v Colts
Actual game-related pro football scandals are harder to come. The Saints gave us Bountygate. They paid players above their contracted wage (hey, there’s a union for a reason, guys!) if they inflicted particular violence and injury on opposing players. The two coaches held responsible, Sean Payton and Gregg Williams, are still coaching.
Dolphins v Patriots
This should be considered “The NFL Cheating Classic”
Spygate- the Patriots stand accused of recording opponents practices so they can steal signs and look like geniuses on gameday.
Deflategate – Patriots alleged Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady schemes to deflate footballs just enough so his scrawny hands can better grip the football. Another reminder of Tom Brady’s legacy: Was he successful? Yes! Was he good? Yes! Is he the greatest of all time? No, he’s lucky if he makes the Top 10 and you know that in your soul, too.
Bradygate- The Dolphins tamper with Buccaneers alleged Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady, meeting with him in secret on a boat and offering him a fake ownership role for a season so he can unretire and play for the Dolphins at age 50-something. Dolphins owner Stephen ross was suspended for this transgression.
That last one, Bradygate… happened because Brady, a former Michigan quarterback, was a friend of Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, also a Michigan Man and a person the University describes as its “single most prolific donor.”
If you go to Ann Arbor, you can visit the Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
Was Michigan Football cheating when they paid for tickets and travel to spy on opponents?
For a Michigan Man, war, business, football… the rules are all the same.
Chargers v Bears
This is where the Harbaugh saga ends.
Let’s say the Big10 members are so upset and petty that they vote next month to suspend the Wolverines from playing in the Big10 Championship game. If you can’t beat ‘em, suspend ‘em!
Say Ohio State does play in that game and blows out Iowa because what is Iowa going to do, score? Then the playoff committee can still decide to put undefeated Michigan in the playoff anyway.
This Michigan team is Harbaugh’s best. They can absolutely win the National Championship. Let’s say they do. Late in the 4th quarter of the title game, Georgia signals in a screen pass. Michigan intercepts the signal, sends the linebacker to the spot where he’ll intercept the pass and return it for the winning touchdown. The Wolverines and all the Michigan Men celebrate.
Harbaugh’s turnaround is complete. His is a Michigan Champion. He has no time for NCAA rules and certainly not for any sanctions.
So he goes back to the NFL where he can choose his spot.
The Bears 1987 draft pick, the one Ditka didn’t want, was Jim Harbaugh. He arrived as the 5th quarterback on the roster. Jim McMahon was still there. One of the other quarterbacks was Doug Flutie, who Ditka also struggled to accept as a person, much less a football player. Another was former Ohio State QB Mike Tomczak who Harbaugh struggled to accept as a person, much less a football player, given his Buckeye heritage.
Harbaugh played in more games for the Bears than any of those other guys. He’s the Bears third leading passer of all time, which seems impressive until you realize he’s right behind Sid Luckman whose first start was in 1939. He is connected to Ditka, if not the Bears’ glory year.
Harbaugh has unfinished business in the NFL. He’s about finished his business in Ann Arbor. He’ll be the Bears next head coach.
But is Jim Harbaugh a cheater?
Bear Bryant wouldn’t think so.
Happy Picking,
The Commissioner
The Grover Picks 