West Virginia prepared to combat sign stealing
Sign stealing is always something that college coaches have to combat, and the subject is back to the forefront in light of the penalties handed down at Michigan over the issue.
The penalties over Connor Stalions advanced sign-stealing scheme resulted in an eight-year show-cause penalty for Stalions, an additional 10-year show-cause for former head coach Jim Harbaugh and a fine expected to eclipse $30 million for the school.
Current head coach Sherrone Moore, now entering his second season, was given a two-year show-cause order and was suspended for one game in 2026.
Helmet-to-helmet communication helps to combat the issue but when an offense operates with tempo it can be both a positive and negative on that front given the needs for signals.
But West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez believes his coaching staff is prepared to combat that.
“So, if It was a Michigan situation we would be ready,” he said.
And there are ways to make it difficult.
“We could huddle and go quick huddles and not have to do any signals,” Rodriguez said. “We can change our signals up. We can change who’s the guy that’s signaling. We got a variety of different signals that we can do for the same play.”
There are still coaches that are really good at picking up on signs, but that has been made more difficult with the helmet communication and multiple signal guys being used.
“There are some guys that can look at it and take them a couple quarters and figure out oh this one every time I saw this signal it was a run or a pass something like that,” he said.
But that tempo that Rodriguez plays with makes it hard to pick up what he’s presenting, and the same thing can be said with the terminology.
“Every time we do this they’re yelling out that. OK, that might be a good thing because we can yell that out and do something different, right? So that’s always been kind of a topic of conversation for our guys, our coaches,” Rodriguez said.
Offer Alert
Fall camp is here and there’s no better time to sign up with us to get all your WVU intel! Sign up today – $1 for the first week, plus a complimentary year of access to The Athletic included. Join – http://gowvu.us/Join
__________________________________________
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan
•Like us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok
