Miami’s players and staff were so worried about Aiden Fisher, they were calling previous IU opponents for tips and clues on how to fool the All-American linebacker.
Coming into the national championship game, Fisher had developed quite the reputation for knowing what play was coming.
After IU’s defense locked down Ohio State, Alabama and Oregon in succession, predictable conspiracies surfaced from frustrated fans.
Was Indiana somehow stealing signs, or hacking into opposing computer systems or headsets?
If you can’t beat, ’em, accuse ’em.
But Fisher was having none of it.
“We watch film, we study, we prepare,” Fisher said in January. “I know a lot of people put different things out, but we just do a great job of preparing. We see hints and things we can see throughout our preparation and we have the best defensive coordinator in college football, when you match all those things you get off to fast starts as defense.”
Miami knew better than to buy into the nonsense too.
In an NFL Draft Combine interview with Brett Kollmann, Miami offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa said the Hurricanes called Oregon center Iapani Laloulu for tips on how to deceive Fisher at the line of scrimmage.
“Number 4 (Fisher) gave a little bit of trouble. I remember one play, we was calling a wide zone, and we always make a dummy call to try and dummy ’em up,” said Mauigoa. “Because we called the Oregon center, Poncho, and he was like ‘Bro, he played quarterback. So he knows everything, he knows the universal language.’
“So we were like, ‘Ok, we gotta dummy this up.’ So our dummy call was disco.”
Miami’s attempts to deceive Fisher had little effect.
“The guy came up to the line of scrimmage, it’d be like, ‘Hey, they’re running wide zone to this side,'” Mauioga said. “I’m looking at them, I’m looking at the center, I’m looking at the quarterback like ‘Are we gonna tease the play or what?'”
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