The sign-stealing incident involving Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines dominated the second part of the college football season.

Now, a possibly comparable situation in NCAA basketball could cause some turmoil.

According to Dan Wolken of USA Today, several SEC coaches believe the Auburn Tigers and Bruce Pearl spied on their pregame shootarounds.

How? There are cameras at the gym.

“An SEC representative confirmed to USA TODAY Sports that the interaction took place in 2018 after the SEC office was made aware of “broad concerns about video cameras in basketball arenas related to visiting team practices and unofficially received information involving a particular university.” Unconfirmed information is often shared with an involved institution over the offseason,” Wolken noted.

“While the SEC did not name the institution, six people affiliated with various SEC programmes said Auburn was the team at the centre of the spying allegations.” Nobody wanted to get up and point the finger directly in the presence of head coach Bruce Pearl. According to individuals with knowledge of the meeting, “during a tense moment, then-South Carolina coach Frank Martin implored his colleagues to stop anonymous sniping and say what they wanted to say.”

The date is December 5, 2009. The Big 12 Championship Game is taking place in Arlington, Texas. Texas is down two points and preparing for a field goal attempt that would send them to the BCS National Championship Game. If this score holds, Nebraska will win its first conference title since 1999 while also throwing a significant kink into the BCS title race. So we need to rewind to better comprehend that, to grasp what’s going through Colt McCoy’s thoughts, to recognise the game-changing greatness of Ndamukong Suh, and to recall why we still have this one tick on the clock.

Why was there no result? According to a source Wolken spoke with, no one could prove it.

It’s no secret that Bruce Pearl has a history with the NCAA, including a previous suspension while at Auburn, but how severe would the fallout be if this were to be proven true? Is it going to be worse than what happened before?

All I know is that the Michigan sign-stealing affair has opened up a whole new realm of things programmes could be doing behind closed doors.