When assistant coaches behave badly, where does the buck stop?
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If there is anything to be learned from the latest scandal to rock the sports world — Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal — it is this: keep your friends close, and your enemies — and assistants — closer.
Ask Richard Nixon.
If Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh is to be believed, he wasn’t part of the scheme. He says he had no knowledge of it. The guy who cheated (and got his boss in trouble) was an overzealous assistant coach.
Where have we heard that before?
Connor Stalions, a member of Harbaugh’s staff — he’s a football “analyst,” whatever that is — allegedly bought tickets to attend more than 30 games at other schools and stole teams’ signals using “illegal technology.” NCAA bylaws prohibit “off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents during the same season.” He is even alleged to have turned up on the sidelines in the stadiums of future opponents disguised as an opposing coach.
Who is this guy, Ethan Hunt?
Harbaugh will ultimately pay the price for this. You know the drill — if he did know about it, why didn’t he stop it? If he didn’t know about it, why not?
Head coaches beware: overeager assistants can create problems.
With the seemingly ever-expanding size of coaching staffs, it’s probably difficult for a head coach to know what all his underlings are doing. The NCAA allows 10 assistant coaches and four graduate assistants, but it doesn’t end there. Michigan, like so many programs, has a large support staff. Besides the four GAs, the Wolverines have an “off field” staff of nine other coaches with titles such as offensive analyst, defensive analyst, special teams analyst, plus a strength and conditioning staff and recruiting specialists consisting of another 12 coaches.
It’s the same everywhere in big-time sports organizations — NCAA football and basketball, Major League Baseball, the NFL. They have big coaching staffs filled with eager assistants who are drinking the local Kool-aid. They’re all-in, as gung-ho as Marines. Stalions, the son of Michigan alumni, grew up a Michigan fan who found his way onto the Michigan staff. That just sounds like trouble.
Related
Busybody assistants have a history of causing big problems for their bosses. A.J. Hinch was the Houston Astros manager when the team used an elaborate scheme to steal signs in the 2017 World Series. It began when Astros employees in the video replay room used a live feed from a camera in center field to steal signs from the catchers of opposing teams, which they relayed to the dugout. Players and bench coach Alex Cora refined the scheme.
The Astros won the Series, but when the cheating was revealed it became a huge scandal and cost Hinch his job. He didn’t approve or carry out the cheating program, but it was decided that he didn’t do enough to stop it. General manager Jeff Luhnow was also ignorant of the scheme, but he was fired too. No player was punished. They were given immunity for their cooperation in the investigation.
Even super control-freak Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots head coach, couldn’t fully monitor his assistants. He became embroiled in the 2007 Spygate controversy that cost him a $500,000 fine and forfeiture of a first-round draft pick because of the doings of a 26-year-old video assistant named Matt Estrella, who was caught recording hand signals from New York’s defensive coaches. He should’ve picked a different opponent. The Jets’ head coach at the time, Eric Mangini, had served as an assistant for the Patriots under Belichick two years earlier, when Estrella was also on the team’s payroll.
Eight years later, Belichick and the Patriots were in the crosshairs of another cheating scandal, this one known as Deflategate (thank Watergate for all the clever “-gate” nicknames). The culprits were a pair of equipment managers, Jim McNally and John Jastremski (you mean the head coach has to keep a close watch on those guys, too?!). They were part of a little scheme to secretly deflate game balls below the league-mandated minimum to suit quarterback Tom Brady’s preferences.
This cost the Patriots a $1 million fine and a four-game suspension for Brady. Brady denied participation in the scheme, but the NFL decided he was “generally aware” of it. McNally and Jastremski were suspended, but were reinstated a few months later.
We turn our attention now to the 2009 Bountygate scandal in which the New Orleans Saints’ defensive coordinator at the time, Gregg Williams, put out a bounty on opposing players — up to $1,000 for an opponent who was carted off of the field and $1,500 for a “knockout” hit, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
The NFL decided that head coach Sean Payton was not a direct participant in the program, but he was aware of it and didn’t attempt to learn the details of what was happening or stop it. Payton was suspended for the 2012 season without pay. Williams was suspended indefinitely. The Saints were stripped of two second-round draft picks.
And finally, there was the Denver Broncos’ 2010 videotaping scandal (sans the “-gate” nickname) in which they recorded the San Francisco 49ers walkthrough practice before the teams met in London that week. This time the culprit was Denver’s director of video operations, Steve Scarnecchia, who had left the Patriots’ employ three years before Spygate. Head coach Josh McDaniels had done almost everything right — Scarnecchia told the NFL that when he offered to show McDaniels the video, the coach told him, “No, I’m not doing that” — except he did not report the incident to the NFL. He was fined $50,000. Scarnecchia was fired.
As always, the penalty and public scrutiny fell hardest on the head coach.
