LOS ANGELES — Thursday saw a wave of new stories about the Michigan football sign-stealing saga with the revelation from Alabama wide receiver Isaiah Bond that the Crimson Tide aren’t watching film on their iPads, but have instead been watching it in small groups together in their facilities. It appeared to either be paranoia due to everything surrounding the Wolverines or maybe there was some smoke.
But it turns out that Alabama isn’t the only one who has gone away from using the Catapult platform (which houses practice film and game film on the cloud for college football teams) in preparation for the games.
On Friday, it was revealed that Michigan has also moved away from utilizing Catapult on the individual player iPads, with offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore confirming that the Wolverines stopped allowing iPad use in that light since November.
“Yeah, just caught wind of things that could be going on, and just told our kids — I think it was early November — hey, we’re not watching stuff on the iPads anymore. Watch it in-house and handle it that way,” Moore said. “It’s something we decided from our own perspective that people heard some things and we wanted to make sure that we were safe on our end.”
There’s some speculation beyond Michigan when it comes to who has access to Catapult, which could explain why multiple teams have turned paranoid. Even quarterback J.J. McCarthy noted that with teams looking to gain competitive edges, you can’t be too careful.
“It makes sense just with everything going on and the society we live in today,” McCarthy said. “But like we haven’t been watching film on our iPads all of November just because of everything that’s been going on, and just making sure that we get that time in the facility, that time to watch film and really dissect whoever we’re playing.
“But at the end of the day, just making sure we get what we need to get done and just adapting what we have to.”
So perhaps while all of this has been sensationalized to be a Michigan-specific thing, in reality, all teams have some kind of concern about what could be stolen in one way or another.
As far as it getting fixed, Moore says that he’s not concerned about it at the moment, but he’s sure that it will be in due time.
“Yeah, I’m sure it will be, but really just focused on this game. All that stuff will get taken care of.”