my main thing this whole time was waiting to reserve judgement until the facts were out. my opinion has changed pretty much as a result of this thread. the usage of the pre-emptive redshirt in many cases is a big deal. another big deal is that i see scholarship being applied in the same cycle as promised minutes in one of those mets posted. that is a big amount of effort difference, that means the redshirt-noredshirt was significantly more powerful than we initially thought. that is a LOT of effort.
i find it harder and harder to believe that long time, well connected coaches - even who do not really peruse the forums - would not have recognized that their experience was substantially different than basically all of their peers.
with in-game glitches where you don't have like, clear attempts to hack in, or to use tools or code to exploit exploits... there's a real question around intent, does the user know what they are doing is not intended behavior. frankly, most users do not think about that stuff, so the general way i look at these things is, someone using a tool (like aimbot in a shooter) or going outside the intended user interface, those folks generally are assumed to know they aren't supposed to be doing that stuff, and having to prove otherwise. folks going through the UI, are generally assumed to be ignorant of their abuse, basically getting the benefit of the doubt, innocent until proven guilty.
as far as, did they guys know they were abusing a significant exploit, or should they have known... i have struggled with that the whole way. i think this thread here puts a pretty good amount of evidence on the 'they either knew or should have known' side of the scale.
do we know which of the coaches this particular team belonged to? i can't tell anymore because it says simai for all the history where the previous coach was...