We now know that it was former Wake Forest player, GA and assistant coach Tommy Elrod who leaked Demon Deacons game plans over a 3-year period, apparently as retribution for not being retained during the regime change from Jim Grobe to Dave Clawson.
But one of the many unanswered questions from the Wakeyleaks saga has been this: Elrod leaking game plans is one thing, but what about the people on the other end of the leaks? Isn't accepting stolen information just as nefarious as stealing it in the first place?
Since the scandal broke when Wake game plans were discovered during a road trip to Louisville, the spotlight fell to the Cardinals to answer how those leaked plays got there in the first place.
On Wednesday, Louisville AD Tom Jurich released a statement explaining his program's side of the story.
Jurich admits Louisville knowingly accepted stolen information, then shared that information with its defensive staff. Apparently, because none of the plays illicitly shared with the Cardinals were not run in the game, Louisville essentially tossed the issue to the side and moved on with its season. By the way, the only reason those plays weren't run was because Wake knew they'd been stolen. And don't forget, the Wake-Louisville game in question was closer than the 44-12 final score indicated; Wake led at one point 12-3. We'll never know how much those ripped plays affected the game, but the fact is that opportunity was stolen from Wake Forest. A few things Jurich's statement did not address: 1) Where was Bobby Petrino in all this? Why did he not see the need to alert Wake Forest there was a mole in its organization? By the way, Jurich's statement is in direct contradiction with what Petrino said immediately after the scandal broke.
"I have no knowledge of the situation,’" Petrino told the Winston-Salem Journal in November. "We take a lot of pride in the way we operate our program. As I’ve stated already this season, my coaching philosophy has always been to play the game with sportsmanship." Here he was on Mike and Mike denying it as well. "I can tell you that we didn't," Petrino said on Mike and Mike. "I like our team, and I'm down here (in Houston) preparing for this game, so I don't really understand what they're talking about. I heard about it right before we got on the plane to leave. But I can assure you that we prepare each week the way that you're supposed to prepare, and I like the fact that our team knows how to do that." So while Petrino is denying his staff had any knowledge of leaked game plans, Jurich admits Petrino's staff accepted and used those same leaked game plans. All this at a school that recently went through a scandal in which head basketball coach Rick Pitino claimed to have zero knowledge of his assistants using prostitutes to lure recruits.
2) Why does Jurich find no issue with his assistants using stolen information? Instead of being concerned of his staff's complicity in comprising the integrity of college football, he's annoyed the scandal has affected prep for a game that is still more than two weeks away. 3) Is the ACC going to accept Louisville knowing using stolen information from another league member without a statement of its own? Currently, the conference states it is still "obtaining the internal findings" from Wake Forest.
We still don't know how many other times Elrod leaked Wake's game plans and, more importantly, to whom he leaked them. But that Wake Forest had to discover for itself that its integrity was being compromised is the most disturbing aspect of this troubling situation.