Report: NCAA opens investigation into Michigan over alleged in-person scouting violations

The NCAA is reportedly investing the Michigan football program for alleged rule violations relating to sign stealing, Yahoo! Sports reported on Thursday afternoon.

The rule in question pertains to scouting future opponents in person, with the rule stipulating “off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents (in the same season) is prohibited.”

According to Yahoo! Sports, the NCAA notified the Big Ten Conference that it was conducting an investigation into Michigan’s actions.

The Yahoo! Sports report notes the following about the investigation:

“Teams are normally provided extensive video footage to scout opponents. At issue, according to sources, is whether Michigan is using unnamed individuals to attend games of both scheduled opponents and possible College Football Playoff opponents in an effort to gather information on the signs they use to call both offensive and defensive plays.”

Sign stealing is a polarizing issue in the sport, in part because it’s technically only illegal if signs stolen are relayed in to players or coaches electronically or if they are stolen using video equipment or other improper means.

But simply reading signs on a sideline is not prohibited. It’s one of the many reasons you will see teams attempt to cover their signs with a towel or a white board on the sidelines when relaying them in.

The issue has been a hot topic in more places than just Michigan, too.

Earlier this week Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz faced a question about reading signs from opponents after some speculation about his team potentially doing so.

“I hadn’t heard any of that,” Drinkwitz said. “That’s kind of news to me with regards to signals. I have no idea what you’re talking on that part. But there is always the game within the game of trying to see; Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin talked about knowing when one was run or pass based off how they would align. So I think that’s been going on in football since its inception.”

Drinkwitz than explained other ways that coaches can read signs from teams without it necessarily being illegal.

What Michigan is alleged to have done goes beyond just reading in-game signals.

“We’re trying to scout every single advantage that we can possibly have in order to win the football game,” Drinkwitz said. “So if a player is tipping something, specifically within, when I think about it, an offensive lineman three-point stance versus a two-point stance. Heavy weight on their three-point stance can usually indicate run. A deeper in-step for an offensive lineman can sometimes indicate pass. None of those things are revolutionary, it’s just a “matter of whether or not those things are something that you look at.

“There’s always formation tells and tendencies. And usually we make sure that a tendency is above the 85% mark before we’ll make a gameplan adjustment for it, because within certainty you feel maybe 85% it’s worth the risk to try to be gameplan specific for that tendency.”