NCAA joins CMU investigation of sideline staffer

Adam Rittenberg, ESPN

• Senior Citizen WriterNov 6, 2023, 01:28 PM ET Close College football press reporter.
• Signed up with ESPN.com in 2008.
• Graduate of Northwestern University.The NCAA has actually joined Central Michigan in investigating a guy resembling former Michigan staff member Connor Stalions who appeared on the Chippewas’sideline in team-issued equipment for their Sept. 1 season opener at Michigan State.Athletic director Amy Folan, in a declaration to ESPN, verified that Central Michigan”continues its review of the matter in cooperation with the NCAA.”Folan revealed this past Tuesday that Central Michigan would examine the male after getting pictures

of him one day earlier. Stalions, at the center of the NCAA’s investigation into Michigan for off-campus scouting and signal stealing, resigned from his position Friday after initially being suspended with pay pending the outcome of the investigation.Editor’s Picks

1 Associated The guy in the images used the exact same attire as Central Michigan’s coaches and other sideline personnel, along with sunglasses for the night game at Spartan Stadium. Stalions appeared on the Michigan sideline Sept. 2 for the Wolverines’ opener versus East Carolina.Chippewas coach Jim McElwain said last week that Stalions’name did not appear on any list of qualifications for the Michigan State game. According to NCAA guidelines, the”team location “throughout games consists of a maximum of 50 non-squad members” directly associated with the game. “Those not in full consistent wear special credentials designated to the team area that are numbered 1 through 50. NCAA guidelines prohibit any other credentials in the team area. “We certainly are aware of a photo drifting around with the sign-stealer guy,”McElwain said Tuesday.”Our individuals are doing whatever they can to get to the bottom of it. We were completely unaware of it. I definitely do not condone it in any way, shape or kind. I do understand that his name was on none of the passes that were [provided] out. Now we simply keep tracing it back and tracing it back and try to figure it out. “The NCAA’s participation likely will extend the timeline for the investigative process and any potential discipline. Its findings might be consisted of in a bigger notification of claims for Michigan, which has yet to be sent.Anil Jain, a prominent teacher in the Michigan State Department of Computer Technology and Engineering and a nationally acknowledged facial recognition professional, believes it’s”highly likely”that the images of the guy wearing sunglasses and a hat on the Central Michigan sideline and of Stalions on the Michigan sideline are the very same person.At ESPN’s demand, Jain and Steven Grosz, a doctoral student, utilized advanced industrial face recognition system to compare the 2 photos. The system compared the images based on a number of facial attributes– Jain said they are trade secrets– to provide a similarity score in the range of absolutely no to 1. The higher the resemblance rating, the more likely the two faces being compared are the same person.Jain said the system produced a similarity rating of 0.6 when comparing the 2 photographs. To verify that score, Jain and Grosz compared Stalions ‘picture to a database of more than 4,500 pictures of white males.” The reason why it’s 0.6 is because there’s a camouflage, “Jain told ESPN. “If I take a similar image, it would be 1. Even changes in the present, illumination, expression

, sunglasses, the match will never be best. Based upon this analysis, the two images are of the very same person with high confidence. “ESPN’s Mark Schlabach contributed to this report.