Why Sign Stealing Isn't A Big Deal

After researching the ins and outs of the Michigan cheating scandal, they did nothing outside of the realm of competition. Teams make and change signs all the time. In D3 ball, as a signal caller, I had to mix up calls and try not to show anything on tape. There are dummy signal callers and all sorts of methods already in place to prevent sign stealing. There's so much media filmed at a game you would be able to find the signs on some public camera angle even without sending an assistant.

Remember the Huddle? Remember when the Quarterback would run from the sideline to the huddle and communicate the play that the coach told him to the rest of the players? If you have ever been in a huddle, it was a great place to fuck around in between plays before the QB got back, but also, it was the Fort Knox of play call terminology. You didn't have to use certain nomenclature; you could all speak in a language that was universally understood. It was simple. You could just say Strong Right  "I" fake dive left 751, and everyone knew their exact assignment and route tree combo. The kid who just moved from out of town knew football and knew what that meant; any dad who needed to sub in as a coach had some idea of what that meant. But it didn't matter because the huddle kept the play call safe. Now, that was the simple days of play calling; now we have play cards with graphics held up on the sideline, hand signals that are football guy sign language, and most pro teams have headsets INSIDE helmets. Playcalling has become highly evolved, but with this speed of information through visual queues putting up the crazy offensive numbers, football has forgotten the key advantage of the now primitive huddle. Secrecy. The evolution of play communication from the coaching staff to the field has been an arms race. This is one of those things that make football unique; outside of the onfield X's and O's, there is a whole other game of chess that is played amongst coaches. This phenomenon was covered by Mike Leach's famous course at WSU.

So, when it comes to the recent allegations against Michigan, it is no surprise most of the coaches don’t exactly care how individuals find signs. 

So, if there was an individual on staff who was looking on TV broadcasts for possible sign stealing, even also buying tickets on his own dime to 30 games that he attended (Maybe his passion and job overlap). There is no possible way to police this, as it is just another step in the innovation of the game outside of the game. In the same way, the Tush Push should never become illegal; off-field innovations should be treated the same way. A team that uses signals all the way down to the high school level changes their signs week to week and even tries to mix up signs when they find out another team may be reading them. When this occurs, teams even bait the other team by trying to make them give a look they want to make a play action work. If you use last week's signal for a certain run play to cause their entire defense to bite and leave a man downfield wide open, it shows signal knowledge may not necessarily provide an outright advantage. There is also the element that if a team spends so much time on implementing a sign-stealing strategy, they use up a finite amount of time in prep they can use for actually putting in a real competitive strategy. At the same time, the huddle is the most secure transfer of information on the football field. Hell, if the NCAA really cared, they should allow headsets in helmets! Now, if the Headsets start to get hacked, that's the newest step in the war game, which is football. The only real rule that was broken was off-campus scouting, which was only banned due to financial discrepancies between football programs. Houston has way less money to send people to games than the University of Texas, and this guy paid for all his own tickets. 

Sign stealing is a gamble teams can make that may help, but over-dependence is just as much as a liability for a team. Innovation and the arms race among coaches cause all of this to even out. 

So yeah, it was probably technically illegal, but it's not like it was an abomination. It just upsets naive people.