Wake Forest says game plan documents somehow leaked to Louisville before their game

So, has someone at Wake Forest been snitchin’?

Wake Forest is investigating how documents pertaining to its game plan might have ended up in Louisville’s hands before last Saturday’s game at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.

”We are concerned that there was some type of security breach,’’ coach Dave Clawson said Tuesday. “I have shared it with Ron Wellman, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure all of our information and data is more secure moving forward.’’

Wellman, Wake Forest’s director of athletics, said Clawson told him of the breach on Friday, the day before the Deacons lost to the fifth-ranked Cardinals, 44-12. Wellman said a member of Wake Forest’s traveling party found the documents at the stadium.

That’s my best guess for how something like that happens. It’s not just play information. The word “documents” leads me to believe there might actually be some fire to this smoke, though there’s no way to know exactly what went wrong.

Here’s one claim that Louisville shut down a play the first time Wake had used it:

“I have no knowledge of the situation,” Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino said in a statement. “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. Right now, our focus is on our game tomorrow at Houston and finishing the 2016 season strong.”

Our Wake Forest blog reacts:

The game was much closer than 44-12 up until a late pick-six by backup quarterback Kyle Kearns and a late meaningless touchdown by Louisville. And for those saying they didn’t use it ‘til the 4th quarter, that’s cute. Knowing a game plan can have an unbelievable impact on a game, and it’s not just reflected in what the score is, but rather what the score could have been.

The great irony here is that the Cardinals’ advantage might’ve been discovered because they were careless with their own documents.

Now that isn’t some heavy level of espionage by Wake either. As a cub reporter, I covered Florida, and interviews were often conducted in the visiting locker room at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Almost every week, you’d find some sort of material from the last week’s opponent. Some notes, a gameday schedule, and other things like that.

Football coaches are insanely anal with their information, so unless someone got loose lips, it’s hard to figure out how it happened.

And I think this is a good point as well. It may be much more about negligence by a Wake staffer, rather than Petrino rappelling into the office and making off with the goods. Maybe just change the passwords on the computers and check who you’re emailing next time, Deacs.