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5 Things We've Learned About The Michigan Sign-Stealing Scandal · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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  Welcome to buck Eyes Tomorrow Morning for Saturday, October twenty First, I'm your
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  host, tom Or. The Penn State game is today, the game against
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  Michigan in thirty five days. You know, we are all about letting you
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  guys behind the scenes on this show, and we're gonna let you get on
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  the scenes on this one. This is not the first Saturday episode of Buckeyes
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  Tomorrow Morning we have recorded this week. It's not even the first one I
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  did with Tony Gurderman. You will hear the episode that we did record earlier
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  in the week, reported that on Thursday, early early afternoon, previewing some
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  of the big games of the weekend. You'll see that in the Buckeyees Tomorrow
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  Morning feed a little bit later on. But right after we recorded that,
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  some fascinating news drops involving the University of Michigan, allegations of signs stealing and
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  much much more. So we're going to be talking about that today and then
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  you can you'll get the game preview a little later on. And when you're
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  wondering, why an't they talking about the Michigan sign stealing thing when they're previewing
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  Michigan, Michigan State well, it was just just a few minutes early.
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  Sometimes you record a little too early and then the world changes, so all
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  the game analysis probably stays much the same, but you'll get that later.
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  So right now, let's talk a little bit about that Michigan sign stealing scandal.
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  The allegations against Michigan that they had someone who was scouting in person,
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  which is against NCAA rules, and you know, potentially violating nc double rules
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  in terms of how they were relaying signals. It's all this is a story
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  that's still playing out, and I think the first thing we need to get
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  on the record is this is something where you do not want to be jumping
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  to any firm conclusions yet. This is a good rule of thumb. In
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  political stories, or world news stories, or any sort of breaking news situation,
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  a lot of the stuff that comes out in the first hours after a
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  story breaks ends up down the line being only partially or not at all true.
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  I wanted to let this play out for about twenty four hours before we
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  did a real deep dive on it. I'm going to bring in number our
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  buddy, Tony Gerderman of bucke huddle dot com to sort of just take a
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  look at this story. What we've learned so far in terms of the initial
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  reporting, Michigan's initial response, some of the response to Michigan's initial response,
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  and the sort of second order reporting from guys like Pete thamil Tony. Just
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  start running us through exactly what are the allegations against Michigan here. Well,
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  and it's more, as you said, it's more than just signs stealing.
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  There's there just the it's understood basically from people around the country around college football
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  that Michigan has done a good job of stealing signs that in itself is not
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  illegal of violation. So that's not all of the story. There's other parts
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  of in person scouting, going to opponents future opponents games, scouting them,
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  shooting the allegedly or perhaps when you're there scouting in person, you're just going
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  to shoot the sign the signals coming in for the plays and then match that
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  up with the plays themselves when you get back to the office. There's that
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  there's you know, perhaps communicating signals via electronics, which could to me means
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  that could mean anything that's that's signaling to something to head, to a coach
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  or to an analyst or whoever. And then signaling signaling it down with your
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  headphones, you know, talking through all of that stuff. All of that
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  is electronics to me. So stuff like that is the main crux. And
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  so that's where we are now, and I'll let you have it now time.
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  Well, okay, So, and I know that there's going to be
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  an immediate reaction, and there has been like an immediate pushback from Michigan folks
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  on this. You know, Ohio State folks have jumped on this with a
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  tremendous amount of glee, as well as other folks from around college football and
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  the Michigan folks. There's been like real harsh pushback on this. And you
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  know, everyone does this. And I was just down at the college game
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  Day set on Friday morning and Desmond Howard was on The stephen A. Smith
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  Show and basically did the whatsamoida thing with you know, I didn't even know.
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  Frankly, stephen A. I didn't even know this was against the rules.
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  And you know, I mean, first of all, that's kind of
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  non responsive to the question of did it happen or not, But it's also
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  you know that you have these I think there's sort of the baked in idea
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  that because the site that we work for has buck Eye in the name,
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  that we are you know, coming at this is a very partial, you
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  know, biased angle. So while I was down there, I talked to
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  Rees Davis, who is neither an Ohio state person nor a Michigan person.
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  He is actually, I believe, in Alabama grad but you know, the
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  host of College Game Day, a fairly neutral arbiter of things on the sport.
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  This is not kirkurb Street, this is not Desmond Howard, It's Reese
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  Davis. So I asked him, you know, basically what they're accused of
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  here, is this something that happens all the time? Is this completely unheard
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  of in the college football world? Here was his answer on that, No,
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  not completely unheard of. I think what has happened is when they changed
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  the rule in the mid nineties to disallow in person scouting, then it became
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  sort of know, a forbidden taboo thing to do. It's clearly against the
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  rules, and if proven to be true, it's over the top and you
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  can't do it. There's no there's no doubt about that. But siin stealing
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  goes back forever. We were Texas, Oklahoma. A couple of weeks ago,
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  and Daryl Royal was so mad at Barry Switzer over the allegations that Barry
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  and Larry Lacewell had set spies to Texas practice to scout them and steal their
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  signs, that Gerald Ford, the President of the United States, the leader
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  of the free world, was there between them and he couldn't get them to
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  acknowledge each other. You know, So sign stealing, I mean, that's
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  as old as sports, and there's nothing wrong with it. If someone steals
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  your signs, get better signs. But if this is true, this is
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  beyond the pale deserves punishment. You know, it's cheating. You know,
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  siins stealing. There's a fine line between cheating and gamesmanship. But you send
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  somebody into a stadium and they for the express purpose of taping ceiling scouting the
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  signs, and it is clearly written in the rule book that you're not supposed
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  to scout in person. It's against the rules. You know, it's as
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  simple as that. It's not it's not an affront to nature. It's just
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  it's just beyond the pail, and it's it's uh, you know, it's
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  cheating if if they did it, But you know, that remains to be
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  seen. I think the funny thing about it is is this notion that that's
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  the only way they could have possibly gotten the signs. Typically everybody uses the
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  TV copy, you know, to get the signs, and there there's a
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  lot of signs stealing that goes on. Vnables is a master of it.
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  No one's ever accused him of doing things outside the rule book. But he's
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  a master of it. And he's not he's not yelling, all right.
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  So that was rees Davis and his thoughts on just the general, you know,
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  the general vibe of the whole thing. Now, I asked him a
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  follow up question on this, the in person element of this, the person
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  scouting going in advanced scouting on this, why is that a bigger deal?
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  Like he mentioned, you know, hey, it's it's a bigger deal because
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  that's illegal. So that's it's against the rules. But why, you know,
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  why is it against the rules? The rule was of initially made in
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  nineteen ninety four in a lot in a lot of sense because of costs associated
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  with traveling to all these games. So why is it that much of a
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  bigger deal if the rule, if it was outlawed because of cost. Why
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  is it so much of a bigger deal to scout in person that that's what
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  gives you a significant advantage over the typical type of watching on TV trying to
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  look across the field and steal signs during the game, which is sort of
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  an accepted part of the game. Why is there a big dark line between
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  those two things in terms of acceptability. Here was his answer. You could
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  see every play. I mean, if you're doing the TV copy, you
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  may or may not get a really good look at all of the guys to
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  sign the guys who are signaling into place and the guy you were signaling decoy
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  plays. You may not get a great look at it all the time.
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  Therefore you're probably ahead of ahead of the game. I'll give you an EGA.
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  This this goes on an all level of sports. My son played college
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  baseball Princeton and at Duke. And when he was at Duke, we were
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  playing I think we're playing William Mary and they had they had the system where
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  they had a number system they signaled in the pictures. William and Mary decoded
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  it because they saw they from the dugout. They saw how a guy was,
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  you know, marking off what which column they were marking off numbers and
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  they figured out what it was. And you know, they gave our pictures
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  a hard time for a little whi until we figured it out. Nobody,
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  you know, there's been accusations, even a great program like Vanderbilt in baseball,
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  not not in the way of this against the rules, but Vanderbilt had
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  people's signs a ton, you know, and they they changed now to that
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  Apple watch thing in college baseball. So, I mean, this is the
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  difference is is if you're in person in the state and you've got your iPhone
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  out, you can get every one of them, go back against the game
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  tape and figure out what it was. And you know, there are some
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  people that are better at it than others. But this is you know,
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  the idea that oh my gosh, signs are being stolen. Hey, everybody
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  steals signs, you know, and if you don't like that, get better
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  signs. But this part of it is against the rules, all right.
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  So that was Rees Davis from College Game Day weighing in on those two subjects.
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  Wanted to give you a little bit of kind of an independent, non
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  partisan view on any of this. We're trying to be as straightforward as we
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  can and play this as down the middle as we can, and then you
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  know, we feel like you deserve an impartial view of this, So Tony,
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  I think the big news that broke on Friday morning was a report from
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  Pete Samil of ESPN and Pete Thamil was one of the most respected college football
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  reporters. He works for ESPN. Pete Tamil and Mark Schlaghbaw released a report.
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  And what was fascinating me about this report is a lot of the stuff
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  they came out Thursday was sort of vague, and it was you know,
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  Michigan is doing this stuff, and you know there's there's a big, a
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  big organizational setup that helps them do this stuff, but it was all a
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  little bit vague. Then on Friday, the report from Pete Thammil, who
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  again is you know, this is not just random Joe Blow. This is
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  one of the more well sourced college football reporters. And he had a name,
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  he put a name on it, he put on you know, he
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  cited all the specific nca A bylaws, but put the specific name of a
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  Michigan staffer on this thing. And you know, you look at that and
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  when you start getting a little more specifics from a credible reporter. I think
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  that to me gives this a little bit more than just you know, at
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  some point, this becomes a little more than just a he said, she
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  said kind of situation. It feels like when you're starting to put specific names
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  on stuff, that makes me think there's you know, there's a little more
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  smoke there. Yeah, when you have the names and really or a name.
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  The first thing that stood out to me through all of this, which
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  gave it some validity before we knew all of the story or as much as
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  we do now, is when the Big Ten came out and warned, essentially
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  warned future opponents like, hey, just so you know, this investigation is
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  going on. I don't think I've ever heard of that before. I've never
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  seen anything like that before, no conference I've ever seen as warned future opponents
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  or alerted future opponents about what a school is being accused of or that there's
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  an investigation going on. So that was like the first red flag for me.
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  And then of course you've got the name, and then getting we're seeing
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  quotes come out from not named sources, but the school has been named of
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  players or people speaking out about what they've seen and confrontations they've had with the
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  guy, and so there are there's some corroboration with the report from several sides,
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  and maybe the Michigan sides as well. Those are just you know,
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  sour grapes that they got beaten all of these things, but it is no
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  longer an open secret. It feels like this is going to become more and
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  more of open to everybody because people are going to be willing to talk.
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  And you know, we've talked about how this the whole coaching profession, the
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  omerita regarding nil. This seems to be something that people I don't know that
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  people are going to be putting their name to it, but it seems like
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  this is something they're going to be willing to talk about. And I think,
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  you know, speaking of putting a name to it, I don't think
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  we actually ever said the name. And it is it is a Heisman level
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  name. Connor Stallions, I mean man oh Man. That is a name
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  of the Year candidate in college football. He is the football analyst, a
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  retired for the for Michigan, A retired captain in the United States Marine Corps.
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  He was the one who is accused of or you know, implicated and
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  potentially going and doing some in person scouting. In his LinkedIn bio, it
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  says he quote attempts to quote employee Marine Corps philosophies and tactics into the sport
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  of football, regarding strategies in staffing, recruiting, scouting, intelligence, planning,
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  and more. Among the skills he listed in his LinkedIn we're quote identifying
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  the opponent's most likely course of action and most dangerous course of action and quote
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  identifying and exploiting critical vulnerabilities and centers of gravity in the opponent scouting process.
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  Boy Tony, that's you know, I can see why he might have been
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  identified as the person based solely on that publicly identifiable information. You can sort
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  of see why there might be some view that he is involved in this from
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  you know, legal or not whatever his role is, that he has become
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  sort of a central figure in this investigation. Yeah, And one of the
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  questions was how long has this been going on? Because the initial reports were
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  didn't really have an idea or didn't really get into the timeframe. But now
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  it seems like there reports have it going back a couple of years and counter
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  Stallions has been associated with the program since Harbaugh arrived twenty fifteen as a like
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  a part time volunteer or I think the defensive staff, and then got hired
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  in full time in twenty twenty two. If you wanted to be a conspiracy
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  theorist and put some math together, what happened in twenty twenty one to convince
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  Jim Harbaugh that hey, this guy should be put on staff full time in
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  a larger manner. Well, I don't know, they beat Ohio State that
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  year, and you know something else, perhaps something is there. But like
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  that's the problem with stuff like this, It just creates. Until you have
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  all of the answers, you're trying to piece it together and point A to
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  point B to point C, and sometimes you jump to J and ning you
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  have to come back to D. And this is probably gonna be one of
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  those things. But until the answers come out, you know, we're going
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  to have to speculate and try to be careful with the speculation. But yeah,
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  this is just another another chapter in the Jim Harbaugh versus the NCAAA legacy.
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  And you know, there has been limited response from Harbaugh and Michigan.
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  All of it has sort of sort of signed around. You know that the
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  idea that he has no idea what's going on, has never seen or heard
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  any rumors of this. You know that the statement said he would fully cooperate
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  in any investigations, which you know, I think if you look back at
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  some of the stuff around the you know, Hamburger, et cetera investigation,
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  I don't think the NCUBA has felt that he is fully cooperated in that investigation.
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  But perhaps this one's a little different. But he says he quote doesn't
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  quote, condone or tolerate anyone doing anything illegal or against NCAA rules. I
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  do not have any knowledge or information regarding the University of Michigan football program illegally
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  stealing signals, nor have I directed any staff member or others to participate in
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  an off campus scouting assignment. Close quote. Now, the interesting question here,
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  Tony, is not what are you accused of? But what can you
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  prove? I had a long conversation with my kids today about so, you
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  know, they were asking me about this story, and I said, okay,
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  so here's what they're accused of the question is what what can you prove?
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  Because the NCAA has had lots of investigations recently, they spent six years
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  on Kansas basketball and ended up with something maybe I don't know. I mean,
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  what can the nset of will they prove? And the real question at
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  this point, and this is, you know, this is where we are
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  delving into speculation a little bit. Is what proof is there right now?
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  Because we don't know exactly who is behind the report to the n Sate ofuble
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  A. I think there's certainly been speculation. There was speculation about Greg Ciano
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  based on a halftime interview at the Rutgers game against Michigan this year. There's
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  been speculation that it was Ryan Day who's behind this? Or the Ohio State
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  football program that's behind us. And I don't think we've gotten a firm answer
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  on any of that yet in terms of who was actually behind this. But
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  the question then is, okay, what proof did they bring to the NCAA,
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  Because if you knew who this guy was in advance, if you knew
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  you know, if this person had been identified, this is this is a
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  you know, there has been plenty of reporting about Michigan being pretty good at
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  getting opposing team signs going back to previous seasons. So if you knew who
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  this guy was and you had identified him before. Is there photos? Are
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  their photos? Is there video of this guy in the stands at UNLV or
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  Rutgers or Bowling Green or wherever this is alleged to have occurred this year Michigan
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  State, perhaps last weekend? Is that why this is happening now? Is
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  there some kind of proof of this? Can they go through security footage?
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  I mean, I don't know what facial I don't know the exact state of
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  facial recognition techology right now. But are there cameras and stadiums where it could
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  you could find this? You know, find hey, here is this guy
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  at these games doing this thing? Because if not, you might get into
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  a situation where there's suspicion but not proof. But it feels like there's you
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  know, there certainly could be proof, And we don't know yet exactly what
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  level of proof has been proffered yet to back up these charges. I wonder
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  if you can also get his location, you know, traveling through the computer,
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  cell phone things like that. How how deep do you have to go
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  to get this? And then if information is wiped? Why and we've seen
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  that question over the years, why did this phone get wiped? And why
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  did this get you know, what's wrong with the data on this computer?
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  So I think there are ways to match things up, But is that circumstantial?
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  Like you what were you doing in Bowling Green? I fud Ruckers?
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  How was at the fud Ruckers and you know how precise? But it can
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  get pretty precise with the location and the GPS stuff like that. I don't
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  you know, you have to turn over you have to turn over his computer
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  apparently or they have a computer. So the kind of information that is in
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  there, even if it's not data directly tied to here here all the videos
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  that I've taken, like I would think there'll still be like location and things
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  like that that they may be able to get into. It's just it's one
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  thing after another right now with the Harbough thing in Michigan and you know this,
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  however this turns out, is I'm with you. I don't know.
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  I don't know what the punishment would because I don't even think I don't even
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  think there is a They don't have a punishment listed for this crime, which
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  I don't know if that's carte blanche or if it's you know, like like
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  do you create the do you create the punishment or is this just we're gonna
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  talk it up to a level one or whatever. Yeah, and that's that's
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  an interesting question because this is not you know, hey, you stole an
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  item from a store that was one thousand dollars or more and therefore you are
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  facing three to twelve months in prison or whatever you know, there is There
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  are not sentencing guidelines on this in the NCAA rules as far as I have
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  been able to tell. So, yeah, where does this go from here?
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  And so that probably means there's a lot of leeway in terms of the
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  nc double A. And some of that is probably going to be determined based
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  on you know, number one, again, what can they prove and we
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  don't know that answered yet. And number two, how how broadly was this
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  known? How broadly was you know, how many people were involved in this
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  and they were out? You know, there was in the Pete family report
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  there were suggestions this was a pretty broad reaching thing, and this was this
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  is the kind of thing that we very hard to chalk up to one bad
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  apple. You know, if one guy is traveling to games and getting signs
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  in advance, it feels like that's something that probably the people would have you
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  know someone else in the building knows about that. That that because otherwise,
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  you know, you're not able to put the information in use. How did
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  you how did you get this information? You know, And in order to
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  put the information into use, the coordinators who are making the play calls would
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  have to know, Hey, you know, here's what the signal is or
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  here's what you know, here's what this means. So you know, there
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  are you're getting into. Other people are involved, and there is an assumption
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  now under NCAA rules, that the head coach knows. You can't just oh,
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  I didn't know that. That's no longer really considered an acceptable excuse under
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  the n c doua A. So you know, if they can prove that
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  this was going on, then you're getting into. You know, people don't
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  know the name Connor Stallions or didn't twenty four hours ago. They know the
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  name Jim Harbaugh, they know the names of the offensive and defensive coordinators.
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  That's you know, that's a pretty notable thing. And I thought one of
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  the other things that was notable was work manual statement the the Michigan AD said,
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  I want to personally assure you that you have m athletics will offer its
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  complete cooperation to the NCAA in this matter. At the University of Michigan,
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  all of us are committed to the highest standards of ethics and integrity for all
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  members of our community. This is the same expectation I have of all coaches,
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  staff and student athletes. Given the ongoing investigation. I'll have no further
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  comments at this time. That feels to me, Tony lock a statement.
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  You can't make that statement and then say, well, you know, technically,
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  by the letter of the law, You're sure the spirit of the law
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  was bent a little bit. But if that's the position you're going to take,
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  I think you have kind of drawn a real line in the stand that
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  you don't have a lot of wiggle room if this investigation comes back with,
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  hey, you know these things provably did happen. Is this a comment from
• 22:52
  an athletic director who doesn't necessarily love his head coach. There's some butting of
• 22:57
  the heads that have gone on between both of them, those guys, and
• 23:00
  this feels like an opportunity to just kinda put it further, put that wedge
• 23:04
  in there, or to maybe get the upper hand a little bit and just
• 23:08
  put it out there. But when whatever happens here, the level of backtracking
• 23:15
  or moving forward on this, If this is the thing that undoes Jim Harbaugh
• 23:23
  at Michigan, and Jim Harbaugh just rides off into the sunset with the NFL
• 23:27
  next year, if he doesn't own up to anything and he's only served a
• 23:33
  three game suspension, what does the NCAA then do to Michigan, who would
• 23:37
  seemingly have gotten off scott free for what the NCAA would view as violations Like
• 23:42
  do you do they then have to hand something down to Michigan because the guy
• 23:47
  who did it is gone and they still need a pound of flesh. Yeah,
• 23:51
  that's gonna be interesting. I did read that Ward Manual statement with the
• 23:56
  real dark line in the sand, and the phrase four calls popped into my
• 23:59
  head and I you know, again, this is that several steps down the
• 24:03
  line. But it does feel like, you know, you could read that
• 24:07
  and interpret that as setting yourself up to end someone's employment in terms of a
• 24:11
  four cause situation. Another thing that I wanted to touch on real quickly was
• 24:17
  some of the response from folks who cover Michigan. And this is from Michigan
• 24:21
  Podcast, which is I think Steve Deese his podcast he put on Twitter.
• 24:25
  I wanted to wait to common until what I saw, until I saw what
• 24:27
  Michigan said. First, a little birdie who has been pretty reliable in the
• 24:30
  past and fairly well known in Michigan circles, told me a month ago he
• 24:33
  heard about these sorts of allegations as it potentially pertains to Matt Weiss, and
• 24:38
  that might explain why no follow up about the strange and unexplains dismissal of the
• 24:42
  former offensive coach offensive coordinator. So Matt Weiss, of course was terminated last
• 24:49
  fall, last December, I believe, and it was, you know,
• 24:52
  basically illegally accessing computers, and that was sort of the allegation that he had
• 24:57
  illegal act illegally acts as someone's email account. To me, Tony, you
• 25:04
  know, I think you can you can read that as a it's all the
• 25:08
  guy who wasn't here now that it was all his fault. That though,
• 25:14
  also is sort of suggestive to me of Okay, if you knew that that
• 25:18
  guy was, you know, and he was terminated as a result of this,
• 25:22
  If if that's how you want to read that, and that's how it's
• 25:23
  being interpreted in this case, then you knew what Stallions was doing, right.
• 25:30
  I mean, there's really no way to interpret that other than well he
• 25:33
  got it from something, right, so then you knew that was happening.
• 25:37
  The guy is still on your coaching staff, he's in contact with your coordinators.
• 25:42
  You know that to me, You know, I think that was sort
• 25:45
  of thrown thrown out as a potentially exculpatory thing, like, oh, look,
• 25:49
  you know the guy who did the bad thing is gone now, so
• 25:52
  it's not a problem, you know. I again, this is all just
• 25:59
  reading something that was put out by someone who is citing sources within the Michigan
• 26:03
  little birdies within the Michigan football program, and I have no way to verify
• 26:07
  whether or not this is entirely fanciful or real. But you know, I
• 26:11
  don't think that's as exculpatory as maybe it's being presented as. No, because
• 26:19
  Jim Harbaugh can't say I don't even know why I fired him. You know,
• 26:25
  there's obviously a reason why he did it. And if the reason is
• 26:27
  this, then this can't be the first you've heard of it, and that
• 26:33
  math doesn't follow, and the fact that you have kept the person who is
• 26:38
  also doing this allegedly on staff. Then further, you know, you've condoned
• 26:45
  it at that point, Like if you fired one person for this and kept
• 26:48
  the other guy on staff, then why are we to assume that this has
• 26:53
  all stopped? And if the Big Ten is warning future opponents that this is
• 26:57
  going on or has gone on, then clearly it hasn't stopped. So I
• 27:00
  don't think that washes away any of this, that the scapegoat that he's gone.
• 27:07
  You can't put any of this on him, because if it's still going
• 27:10
  on, I don't think he's I don't think they would fire him and then
• 27:17
  he would go out and travel and do these things and send stuff back voluntarily
• 27:22
  like here, here are some signals that I've taken have at it like that's
• 27:27
  it's very a very bridge too far on that one. Yeah, and you
• 27:33
  know, again, I think one thing I do want to draw as we're
• 27:36
  sort of wrapping this up, a pretty clear distinction here is there are a
• 27:40
  lot of people a lot of the initial reaction, especially for Michigan folks,
• 27:42
  is yeah, well everyone steals science, And I think that's I think that's
• 27:47
  true. I think that is a long and storied history. And talk to
• 27:51
  Reece Davis about that. You heard from Reece Davis about that a little bit
• 27:53
  earlier in the show, But it does feel like there is a very clear
• 27:59
  and you know, a clear dark line between yes, everyone steals signals and
• 28:04
  doing it electronically doing it in advance asked him about that as well earlier in
• 28:10
  the show. This is the difference between the runner on second base figuring out
• 28:15
  that, hey, you know your signals are you know, it's a third
• 28:18
  signal after the first time you put down two or whatever, and signaling that
• 28:25
  into the to the batter versus what the Houston Astros were accused of. You
• 28:29
  know that there that is a that is viewed as a very clear distinction in
• 28:33
  sports. So again, a lot of this is going to depend on what's
• 28:37
  provable, but it does feel like you know that that I think, Tony
• 28:42
  is a very important distinction for people to understand that the everybody does it is
• 28:48
  true of sign stealing, but it's not necessarily true of this type of sign
• 28:55
  stealing. Yeah, you've basically allegedly created an entire position and you've set aside
• 29:03
  some payroll for it, and I don't know if that's the the The travel
• 29:08
  expenses can be floid and things like that where you can find out where this
• 29:12
  person has gone. But it's it's very different to have a staffer up into
• 29:18
  press box during a game trying to figure things out. And all of this
• 29:22
  is happening so quickly during a game that you can only get so much out
• 29:26
  of it. It's the pre preparation over weeks and then the game leading up
• 29:33
  to the week with all of the signs dealing that I think would really is
• 29:36
  really where it pays off. But we've seen you know, Brent Ventables at
• 29:40
  Clemson was very good at it, but would also get his calls in late
• 29:44
  because they're looking to see exactly what signals come in. And so that stuff
• 29:48
  has happened. And again we've never seen the acc come out and say hey,
• 29:52
  everybody just be aware. That's to me, that's clear indication that this
• 29:56
  goes way beyond everybody else, does it, Because you don't get these statements
• 30:03
  from the Big Ten or these actions from the Big Ten or the NCAA every
• 30:07
  day, because this is not an everyday thing that has happened. Yeah,
• 30:11
  and again there's all of this has to sort of play out in the in
• 30:17
  the investigation in the NCAA and the Big Ten punishment system if it comes to
• 30:22
  that. But there's enough smoke here in a couple different directions in terms of
• 30:29
  the Big Ten's response, in terms of some of the reporting from Pete Thamil
• 30:33
  and others on this topic that it feels like it's not nothing. The odds
• 30:37
  of this is absolutely nothing and completely fanciful are probably not real high based on
• 30:45
  some of the initial responses. We'll have to keep an eye on things.
• 30:48
  We'll continue to let this whole process play out. And I, you know,
• 30:52
  I think it's way too soon to make, you know, firm judgments
• 30:55
  on oh, they need to vacate this so they need to fire that guy,
• 30:57
  or they need to whatever. Let the whole process play out, but
• 31:02
  it is. It is very interesting now that we're sort of through the initial
• 31:06
  reporting, first response from Michigan, first response from the uh, you know,
• 31:10
  the the reporting side again, it's sort of interesting to see how this
• 31:14
  is so you can sort of see it taking shape. So we'll continue to
• 31:17
  keep an eye on that stuff. We're also going to keep an eye on
• 31:18
  the football field, where Ohio State is gonna playing Penn State this weekend.
• 31:22
  Should be a very eventful game at the Horseshoe kicked off at noon on Saturday,
• 31:26
  will be there'll be a Boy Tony. There's gonna be plenty to talk
• 31:29
  about. Oh boy is there gonna be plenty to talk about before and after
• 31:32
  that game is you know, one of the one of the biggest games of
• 31:34
  the college football season. Don't want that to get completely lost here as we
• 31:38
  head into the college football Saturday buck guys and Nitney Lands at noon. We
• 31:42
  will have our full postgame coverage at the end of that game at YouTube dot
• 31:45
  com slash Buckeyehuddle. That is gonna be a game that is going to have
• 31:48
  a major, major impact on the Big Ten East Trace, the Big Ten
• 31:52
  Championship, and the college football playoff hunt as well. Make sure you are
• 31:56
  at Buckeyehuddle dot com for full coverage of all of that YouTube dot com slash
• 32:00
  Buckey Huddle, and of course follow us on all of our podcasts. Should
• 32:02
  be a busy recruiting weekend as well. Lots of big visitors in town.
• 32:06
  It's gonna be a lot to talk about all at Buckeye Huddle dot com.
• 32:08
  That will do it for today. Thank you guys all for joining us.
• 32:10
  Have great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow.