Being charged with alleged violations of NCAA Bylaw 11.6.1 (sign-stealing) is a major slap on the back for any team. And back in October, people believed that Michigan was engaging in exactly that. Ryan Walters, Boilermakers HC, made the situation even worse for Michigan. “What’s crazy is they weren’t allegations. It happened. There’s video evidence. There’s ticket purchases and sales that you can track back,” Walters had stated, alleging that Michigan staff member Connor Stalions was there buying tickets for games against Wolverine’s conference. However, now the “Tiger Woods” of college football, Kalen DeBoer, goes in on the precautions that which NCAA is taking to prevent this from ever happening again.

Today, 17th July, Kalen DeBoer on The Next Round, stated, “It does shut off with 15 seconds left, and so, you know, there’s a piece of the game as long as you’ve done this 20-some, 20-plus years. There’s new elements now and it honestly, it kind of makes it fun. You know, it makes it fun, but I think it’s a good thing. I don’t know if it necessarily solves what I think it was intentionally brought up to do and the stealing of signs or whatever.” Currently, the NCAA is implementing new tech to present a cutoff feature in the helmets of the HCs to avoid any issues regarding sign stealing.

What’s worse is that Michigan was not the only one who was called out for sign stealing. Back in December, Ohio State was also hit with an alleged sign-stealing scandal. A Terrapins former coach stated that a staff member from Ohio State in 2022 “allegedly accessed Maryland’s practice video database, which included all offensive/defensive signals that the Terps had practiced that offseason.” The entire act took place on the software Catapult and it was noted that the footage was directly grabbed from there. It is also concerning that this isn’t the only issue that the NCAA has to deal with currently.

More problems but no proper solution

On July 11th, on an episode of Undisputed, Keyshawn Johnson brought into discussion an important remark that Deion Sanders had made. “You know, I agree with Dion 1000%. You can’t make a bad decision based on a number that you think you’re going to get in an NIL space. Those numbers aren’t real, Skip. I deal in the NIL business; it’s not real numbers at the end,” Johnson had mentioned agreeing to the strong stance that Deion Sanders has taken against NIL deals being put before games. This issue is major in the sense that it is turning college football into this money-printing machine and this is not what true sports are supposed to be.

Even in a survey conducted by 247Sports, the results revealed significant discrepancies and differences in NIL deals between players. Some players who had taken part in the survey even went on to say that the amounts being promised were not even close to the ones which were finally handed out. The problems caused by NIL deals were experienced firsthand in the Jaden Rasheda – Billy Napier lawsuit as well. While it’s good to see DeBoer confirming that NCAA is finally taking steps to resolve the ongoing problems, it’s yet to be seen that if those steps are even effective or not.