Michigan's Sign-Stealing Scheme and the Limits of Gamesmanship

Timeline

1. 2021–2023Stalions arranges for others to attend and film future opponents' games; the NCAA later counts 56 instances of scouting 13 opponents across 52 games.
2. Oct 19, 2023Reports reveal an NCAA investigation; Michigan suspends Stalions.
3. Nov 3, 2023Stalions resigns.
4. Nov 10, 2023The Big Ten suspends Harbaugh for the final three regular-season games; he later accepts the suspension.
5. Jan 8, 2024Michigan wins the national championship; Harbaugh leaves for the NFL soon after.
6. Aug 15, 2025The NCAA Committee on Infractions issues its decision: four years' probation, large fines, an eight-year show-cause order for Stalions and a ten-year show-cause for Harbaugh.

The ethical issues

• Gamesmanship vs. cheating: deciphering signals is accepted; in-person advance scouting is banned.
• Cooperation: destruction of phones and files obstructs any fair finding.
• Head coach responsibility: should a coach answer for a staffer's scheme he says he did not know about?
• Collective punishment: whether postseason bans should fall on current players.
• Competitive advantage that cannot be measured.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder	Interests & obligations
Michigan players	A championship earned on the field; exposure to penalties for staff conduct.
Connor Stalions and staff	Their careers; duties of honesty and cooperation.
Jim Harbaugh	Reputation and future eligibility in college coaching.
Opponents	Fair competition and the security of their game plans.
Big Ten and NCAA	Credible, timely enforcement.
University of Michigan	Finances, compliance culture, and reputation.

The case

Football teams send plays from the sideline with hand signals and signboards. Watching an opponent’s signals during a game and working out what they mean is a long-standing, legal part of the game. NCAA rules, however, prohibit off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents in the same season, and they bar electronic recording of an opponent’s signals during a game. The rule was designed partly to keep wealthier programs from outspending others on scouting.^[1][7]

According to the infractions decision, the conduct came to light on October 17, 2023, when NCAA national office leadership received information about potential impermissible scouting. The information came from a confidential source and was developed further by an investigative firm. Because it suggested “a potential real-time and ongoing threat to the integrity and fairness of upcoming football contests,” the NCAA told Michigan and the Big Ten the next day.^[8] Soon after, reports revealed that the NCAA was investigating Michigan, then ranked second in the country, over a sign-stealing operation.^[2] At its center was Connor Stalions, a low-level football staffer. The NCAA later found that during the 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons, Stalions bought tickets and gave them to another staff member, interns and acquaintances. They filmed future opponents’ sideline signal-callers and passed him the footage, which he called “dirty film.” On one occasion he attended a game himself. The panel counted 56 instances of scouting 13 future opponents across 52 games. Stalions spent nearly $35,000 on tickets in 2022 alone.^[5]

Background

The scheme was methodical. Stalions bought tickets in his own name for more than 30 games over three years at 11 Big Ten schools.^[1] According to the NCAA, he called the group of people who filmed for him the “KGB.”^[1] The investigation spread beyond Michigan. Central Michigan became involved after Stalions was photographed in disguise on its sideline during a September 1, 2023 game against Michigan State. Central Michigan removed a member of its coaching staff and said it was cooperating with the NCAA.^[1] In his resignation letter, Stalions said neither Harbaugh nor others on the team knew of any “improper conduct.”^[1]

Michigan’s defense pointed to how widely signals were shared. It submitted evidence that before Michigan beat Purdue in the 2022 Big Ten championship game, Rutgers shared defensive signals with Purdue and Ohio State shared offensive ones.^[1]

The rules and governance

The core rule, NCAA Bylaw 11.6.1, says that “off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents (in the same season) is prohibited,” with limited exceptions.^[1] The Big Ten’s power came from a different source: its sportsmanship policy, which let the conference act before the NCAA finished. Harbaugh planned a court challenge but on November 16, 2023 dropped it and accepted the suspension. The Big Ten then agreed to end its role in the investigation.^[1]

NCAA head-coach responsibility rules presume that head coaches are responsible for violations by their staff unless they can show they promoted compliance and monitored staff. The notice of allegations did not provide evidence that Harbaugh knew of the scheme, but said he had missed “red flags.”^[1] Baker defended telling Michigan and the Big Ten about the investigation during the season, saying he worried it might be affecting results.^[1]

During the season

Stalions resigned on November 3, 2023.^[3] The Big Ten, acting under its sportsmanship policy before the NCAA had finished, suspended head coach Jim Harbaugh for the final three regular-season games. Harbaugh accepted the suspension.^[1][4] Michigan went on to win the national championship in January 2024. NCAA president Charlie Baker said Michigan had won it “fair and square” and that NCAA investigations needed to move faster.^[1] Harbaugh left for the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers.

The findings

In August 2025, an NCAA Committee on Infractions panel issued its decision. It found that the scouting scheme, Harbaugh’s head-coach responsibility violation, and most of the failures to cooperate were Level I, the most serious category.^[5] Stalions had told an intern to “clear out” related files and admitted disposing of his phone in a pond. The panel called his failures to cooperate “some of the worst the COI has ever seen.” It found that Sherrone Moore, then an assistant and later head coach, deleted a text thread with Stalions after the story broke, and that Harbaugh refused to provide records or be interviewed. It also found that the program had been dismissive of compliance staff.^[5]

The decision described Stalions as “the architect behind an elaborate impermissible scouting scheme.” By his own admission he had spent significant resources and effort to plan it, decipher signals and document them for other staff. He “had access to key members of Michigan’s coaching staff.” The panel wrote that “aspects of the record suggest that there may have been broader acceptance of the scheme throughout the program” and that, “at a minimum, there was a willful intent not to learn more about Stalions’ methods.” It praised the chief compliance officer, but said the football program’s culture “was more powerful and won the day”: her staff’s efforts were “rebuked, dismissed and disregarded by the football program,” so Michigan “failed to create a culture of compliance.”^[8]

The panel said that “the true scope and scale of the scheme — including the competitive advantage it conferred — will never be known” because materials had been destroyed.^[5]

Penalties

The panel classified the case as Level I-Aggravated for Michigan, Stalions and Harbaugh and found Michigan, Harbaugh and Moore to be repeat violators. It was Michigan’s fifth Level I, Level II or major infractions case, after cases in 2024 (football), 2010 (football), 2003 (men’s basketball) and 1991 (baseball). Separate recruiting violations by other football staff were part of the same decision, and two former assistant coaches resolved their cases through negotiated resolutions.^[8] Michigan’s repeat-violator status could have justified a multiyear postseason ban. The panel decided that a ban “would unfairly penalize student-athletes for the actions of coaches and staff who are no longer associated with” the program, and imposed financial penalties instead. These included a $50,000 fine plus 10% of the football budget, the loss of postseason revenue-sharing for the 2025 and 2026 seasons, and the cash equivalent of a scholarship reduction. It added four years’ probation and recruiting limits. Stalions received an eight-year show-cause order, and Harbaugh a ten-year order to begin after an earlier one ends in 2028. Moore’s two-game self-imposed suspension was extended by one game.^[5][6]

Aftermath

A former assistant director of player personnel received a three-year show-cause order.^[1] A former assistant coach whom Michigan had fired, alleging he coached players on how to answer investigators, was cleared by the NCAA.^[1] In December 2025, Moore was removed as head coach for a separate, unrelated matter.^[1] The financial penalties were expected to cost the program more than $20 million in revenue, among the largest in college football history.^[1]

The core dilemma

Where is the line between clever gamesmanship and cheating? And when wrongdoing is proven but its effect cannot be measured, and the people responsible have left, who should bear the punishment?

Competing values

• Competitive ingenuity vs. rule-bound fairness: decoding signals is admired; organized advance scouting is banned.
• Truth vs. self-protection: destroying evidence protected individuals and undermined the process.
• Institutional vs. individual accountability: fines hit the university, show-cause orders hit departed staff.
• Protecting current athletes vs. deterrence: sparing players weakens the strongest deterrent.

Strongest arguments

For the NCAA’s approach: the panel targeted the people responsible and the institution’s finances while sparing players who had nothing to do with the scheme. Treating obstruction severely protects the integrity of every future investigation.

For a harsher or different approach: a championship season benefited from a banned scheme, and money penalties are absorbed by a wealthy program. Alternatively, some argue the rule itself is arbitrary, since sign-stealing is legal and many programs share opponents’ signals.^[1]

Applying the frameworks

Kantian (duty)

A Kantian lens distinguishes legitimate observation from a scheme that breaks a known rule and relies on concealment. Destroying evidence and refusing to cooperate are further breaches of duty to the shared system of rules that all programs accept.

Virtue

Virtue ethics examines a program culture said to be dismissive of compliance staff, in which a junior staffer’s obsessive project was not checked. Leadership virtues, especially attention, honesty and responsibility, matter as much as the individual’s misconduct.

Utilitarian

Consequentialists weigh deterrence against harm to current athletes. The panel chose large financial penalties instead of a postseason ban, judging that punishing players for staff conduct would do more harm than good. Whether that deters future schemes is the open question.

Walk it through: the Simple Decision Model

1. Spot the issue. You are a Michigan football compliance officer in 2022 and hear that a staffer is buying tickets to opponents’ games. The stakeholders include players, coaches, the university, opponents, the conference and the NCAA. The codes in play are NCAA bylaws on scouting and your institution’s compliance policies.
2. Gather facts. What exactly is being reported? Are the tickets being used for scouting future opponents? Who in the program knows?
3. Test options. Options: (a) ignore it as harmless; (b) ask the staffer and head coach directly; (c) open a formal review and report if violations are found. Weigh the program’s success and internal relationships against compliance duties.
4. Check codes and law. Are you being discouraged from looking closely? Would your response look adequate if a violation were later confirmed?
5. Decide and document. Record the reports and the steps taken.
6. Communicate and follow up. Communicate findings to the athletic director and, where required, report to the NCAA, and train staff on scouting rules.

What’s settled and what’s contested

• Settled: the scheme’s existence and scale as found by the panel; the penalties; the destruction of evidence.
• Contested: how much competitive advantage Michigan gained; what Harbaugh knew; whether the 2023 title is tainted.

Why this case matters

The case shows how a narrow procedural rule can protect fair competition, and how obstruction can make the true harm unknowable. It is also a test of how enforcement can avoid punishing the wrong people when wrongdoers have moved on.

Key terms

Gamesmanship

Pushing the rules to their limits, without technically breaking them, to gain an edge. It tests, and can erode, the game.

Rules vs. spirit of the game

Rules are the written minimum; the spirit is the fairness and respect the rules exist to protect. Rules set the floor; spirit sets the ceiling.

Integrity

A commitment to honesty and ethical principle in competition and administration, including when nobody is watching.

Institutional accountability

Structures that make a sport organization explain its decisions and face consequences: clear authority, transparency, appeals, independent oversight and enforcement.

Definitions from the Ethics Cases glossary.

Discussion questions

1. Why is stealing signs from the sideline during a game acceptable but filming them in person beforehand prohibited? Is that a principled line?
2. The NCAA panel said the scheme's advantage "will never be known." Should penalties depend on proving an advantage?
3. Was it right to replace a postseason ban with fines so current players were not punished? Who ends up paying the fines?
4. Should Harbaugh be held responsible for a staffer's scheme? What should a head coach be expected to know?
5. How should enforcement work when it takes nearly two years and many key people have moved on?

Sources

1. University of Michigan football sign-stealing scandal — Wikipedia
2. NCAA investigating No. 2 Michigan amid sign-stealing allegations — ESPN
3. Michigan football analyst Connor Stalions resigns amid investigation — ESPN
4. Michigan is accused of stealing other team's signs. Here's why its coach just got banned — Associated Press
5. Overwhelming evidence shows impermissible scouting scheme in Michigan football program — NCAA
6. Michigan avoid playoff ban but face record NCAA fine over sign-stealing — The Guardian
7. Investigation of Michigan for sign-stealing stems from NCAA rules made to curb financial advantages — Associated Press
8. University of Michigan Public Infractions Decision (Aug. 15, 2025) — NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions