How Rampant Is Sign Stealing?

What I have learned in my years covering college football is when you hand a player a microphone, the response is either scripted, or he is telling the truth. Sometimes, you get a mixture of both, but you just know when you are getting something good.

Michigan quarterback JJ McCarthy gave a response that is worth examining.

The question to McCarthy was, “I talked to Trevor Keegan at the Rose Bowl, and he put in perspective how you guys feel about this sign-stealing scandal, that you guys are somehow involved in it or somehow you guys knew. He goes, I study film. I know the safety is coming because I see tendencies. That kind of pissed him off. I wonder if that’s the case for you guys if the knowledge that you have comes legitimately if that’s the word?”

McCarthy’s response says it all:

“Yeah, and I also feel like it’s so unfortunate because there’s probably – I don’t want to say a crazy number, but I’d say a good number, 80 percent of the teams in college football steal signs. It’s just a thing about football. It’s been around for years. We actually had to adapt because in 2020 or 2019 when Ohio State was stealing our signs, which is legal and they were doing it, we had to get up to the level that they were at, and we had to make it an even playing field. I just feel like it sucks, just because like Mason said, we do work our butts off. We do watch so much film and look for those little tendencies and spend like 10, 15 minutes on one clip alone just looking at all the little details of the posture, of the linebackers or the D-ends, the safeties off levels, the corner to the field is press but the corner to the boundary is off, little stuff like that where it’s like, you could say it’s all sign stealing, but there’s a lot more that goes into play, and a lot of stuff that gets masked, a lot of work that gets masked just because of the outside perception of what sign stealing is all about.”

– Michigan QB JJ McCarthy on sign stealing in College Football

In the history of college football, rivalries have boiled over to epic proportions.

Back in the 1970’s, the war waged between Texas’ Darrell Royal and Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer was so intense that Royal accused Switzer of spying on his practices. To help smooth things over, President Gerald Ford met with both Switzer and Royal, but that meeting did not help matters. The game ended in a 6-6 tie, and neither spoke kindly of the other after.

I look at what happened to Michigan throughout this whole ordeal with sign stealing, and I take McCarthy’s quote for what it is worth and using as a guide. Could it simply be Ohio State could not handle the losing to Michigan and did whatever it took to derail its rival?

I am putting my conspiracy theorist hat on here: even though Ohio State did not play Michigan in 2020, and McCarthy did not join Michigan until the 2021 season, the junior quarterback went out of his way to identify Ohio State and put a timeframe to it.

Urban Meyer had a coach on staff at Ohio State whose job was all things Michigan.

Watch every game.
Know who they’re recruiting.
Etc.

“That’s all he did” pic.twitter.com/gSSvhiKycU

— Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) April 14, 2023

Again, it was Urban Meyer who said the following, “I’m not sure there’s anybody that’s respected that rivalry more than I have. I studied it. We had a little board everywhere about who they (Michigan) recruited, what they were doing offensively and defensively. I had one coach, that’s all he did, is watch them year round.”

Meyer was 7-0 against Michigan and had a database of everything Michigan did. But when Harbaugh plays the same game, now it isn’t fair?

Until the sport uses wireless communication, teams will spy on each other, and rivalries will boil over. 

Again, remember the Mike Leach Red River Rivalry story of the Fake Playbook – that is all you need to know of how desperate teams are to win and will do anything to win.

Just how rampant is sign stealing? Maybe the better question is, who isn’t trying to steal signs?