Everything in life is a matter of perspective, and depending on how you view things, the University of Michigan’s win over Ohio State in Saturday’s football game is either the universe setting things right or a triumph of darkness over the light.
The Wolverines’ 30-24 victory over the Buckeyes puts to rest – for now – any talk about deception and chicanery in sports in general and college football in particular. As you may have heard, the Big Ten Conference suspended Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh for three games, including last Saturday’s and the previous week’s meeting at Maryland.
The conference joined in on the NCAA’s investigation over concerns that a Michigan analyst led an operation to steal signs in impermissible ways.
The school immediately tried to forestall the punishment in court, but eventually dropped their opposition in exchange for the Big Ten ending their investigation.
The Wolverines won their three games without Harbaugh, but the coach will be back for this Saturday’s Big Ten championship game and any postseason contests.
If you were paying attention, you may have noticed the presence of the word impermissible.
That word implies that officials at the nation’s repositories of higher learning, where integrity is supposedly always on the syllabus, are OK with their representatives trying to gain an edge over an opponent by figuring out what play they’re about to run.
There is, of course, a solution to all of this. The colleges can simply institute the system the NFL has been using for nearly 30 years.
There, a coach communicates directly with the quarterback or his defensive counterpart who has a green dot on his helmet for a period of time before the next play begins.
Last month, one school took messaging to another level. At Gallaudet, the football team got permission from the NCAA to use a 5G helmet that transmits a play from the coach’s tablet into a lens that the quarterback can see over his right eye.
The system was developed in conjunction with AT&T and debuted in a game against Hilbert College, a 34-20 win.
Gallaudet quarterback Brandon Washington ran for 126 yards and three touchdowns, so something obviously worked. As a team representing Gallaudet, a school for deaf and hearing-impaired students, the Bison were allowed to employ the system so that opponents wouldn’t read their sign language.