Another day, another development in the Michigan football sign-stealing scandal, only this development isn't coming out of Ann Arbor. It comes from Columbus, Ohio of all places, where the hatred for the University of Michigan runs so deep that the Ohio State Buckeyes do their best to cross out all “M's” during the week of The Game. To make matters even more interesting, this development isn't even a recent one. It dates back to December 2022, when both the Michigan and the Ohio State football programs were getting ready for the College Football Playoff.

As the Ohio State football team prepared for their Peach Bowl semifinal game versus the eventual repeat National Champions, the Georgia Bulldogs, the Buckeyes went to the NCAA with a curious inquiry: Is it permissible to have members of your staff attend the other semifinal to scout future opponents?

Ohio State football's intriguing inquiry

Now at this point in time it's pretty well-documented that the NCAA does NOT allow in-person scouting of future opponents, however, because the College Football Playoff is not technically an NCAA event (confusing, I know), there was a grey area that needed to be addressed, according to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports. Bill Hancock, the executive director of the College Football Playoff, spoke to Yahoo Sports about Ohio State's inquiry and how they handled the question.

“We didn’t have a policy,” Bill Hancock told Yahoo Sports, “and we operated without one until the question was raised. We just followed the NCAA policy that allowed scouting in postseason tournaments.”

According to Dellenger, in-person scouting of a regular season game of a future opponent has been prohibited by the NCAA for nearly 30 years. However, once the postseason arrives, the NCAA permits in-person scouting during single-site events like the NCAA basketball and baseball tournaments. With College Football having its own postseason tournament, that opens the door for the Buckeyes, the Wolverines, or anyone else to send staff to whatever games they please during bowl season.

This ended up being a moot point. A highly-anticipated National Championship-set rematch of Michigan and Ohio State football never came to fruition. Both the Wolverines and Buckeyes went down in the semifinals, paving the way for the most lopsided College Football Playoff game in the tournament's short history.

Now, the rematch we're looking forward to between the Buckeyes and Wolverines comes in three weeks time. November 25th, just two days after Thanksgiving, is the date of one of the most consequential meetings between these two bitter rivals. For the sake of drama and the highest possible stakes, I only hope that both the Michigan and Ohio State football teams arrive undefeated, unscathed, and uninterested in niceties.