by even having the conversation about the degree of impact - it ignores the the breaking of rules. Who cares what the impact was?
But since it continues to be reintroduced into this thread, Klatt ( who I often agree with) is dead wrong. The more you played, coached or understand the modern day Xs and Os, the more you understand that the impact of knowing exactly what the opponent is going to run is a huge impact.
I also think that the impact would likely vary a lot from team to team. Having the signs from the old Bo and especially Woody teams would be more-or-less irrelevant because even without the signs you pretty much know that they are going to run off tackle every down unless it is third-and-forever in which case they'll reluctantly pass.
I would bet that the modern playbook at Ohio State has easily twice as many plays as it did back in Woody's day.
Then there is the issue of HUNH vs. offenses that huddle and huddling also gives you the opportunity to trick the stealer simply by the QB overriding the sign in the huddle.
All that said, I agree with this:
by even having the conversation about the degree of impact - it ignores the the breaking of rules. Who cares what the impact was?
But since it continues to be reintroduced into this thread, Klatt ( who I often agree with) is dead wrong. The more you played, coached or understand the modern day Xs and Os, the more you understand that the impact of knowing exactly what the opponent is going to run is a huge impact.
This is what leads me to my point in response to the JJ McCarthy quote. Nobody will ever know how much impact it had but the fault for that is 100% with the Michigan Wolverines so it comes off as beyond tone-deaf to whine about it. If he doesn't like that his accomplishments are under a cloud of suspicion well, take it up with YOUR staff.
@SuperMario , I think you are being a little thin-skinned. Twice in this thread you have jumped on people under the assumption that they were comparing the underlying wrongdoing when that interpretation was, IMHO, not at all warranted:
The first time was when one of the M posters was making the argument that Stalions' sending people to scout didn't violate NCAA rules so long as the people sent weren't Michigan staffers. I said that this was like hiring someone to kill your wife then using the defense that you didn't pull the trigger yourself. I thought it was inherently obvious that I was comparing the defense of "I didn't do it, I arranged for someone else to do it" which is the exact same in both cases rather than the wrongdoing of breaking an NCAA rule / murder.
The second time
@Honestbuckeye compared an OVI defendant claiming that they were driving well so the wrongdoing didn't hurt anyone to the Michigan defense (that has been made by other Michigan posters even if not by you) of "it didn't have an impact." Same here, the underlying wrongdoing isn't being compared it is the defense that is being compared.
You are going to continue to run into this issue because defenses are, by definition, offered only when one is accused of some wrongdoing. Thus whenever a defense offered on Michigan's behalf is compared to any other defense it is going to be compared to a defense to some kind of wrongdoing and since breaking NCAA rules is pretty low on the list of dastardly offense, the underlying offense is almost always going to be morally worse.
Just as a preemptory thing, if some Michigan coach ends up having done this on the orders of Harbaugh and he offers as his defense that he was "just following orders", I'm going to compare that defense to the defenses offered at Nuremberg and I want to state in advance that I am NOT AT ALL comparing the underlying offense of breaking NCAA rules to the underlying offense of killing millions of people. If that situation comes to pass I am only comparing the DEFENSE, not the offense.
Finally, I want to peremptorily nominate the preceding paragraph for the greatest and most convoluted example of Godwins's Law to ever exist! Yay me!
