Did Connor Stalions make appearance in Ann Arbor before Michigan-Ohio State game?

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The Michigan football sign-stealing saga has taken so many bizarre twists and turns, but what happened before the Ohio State game might just take the cake.

Connor Stalions, the former Michigan analyst who is no longer with the program because of the advanced scouting operation, has been at the heart of one of the strangest storylines in the history of college sports.

First, there was the part about him buying dozens tickets to games and having people film the sidelines with cellphones. Then came the pictures of him standing on the sideline of a Central Michigan game decked out in CMU coach’s gear. There’s the 500-page manifesto for taking over Michigan football, the vacuum repair business, the time he spent as a Marine.

Stalions is certainly a man of mystery.

Well, we can put another notch in that belt, because apparently, according to some Barstool Sports employees on social media, he was back in Ann Arbor for the biggest game of the season.

Stalions made a half-undercover, half-public appearance during the Barstool Sports pregame show across the road from the Big House on Saturday morning -- at least that’s what the company infers.

Barstool founder Dave Portnoy, a Michigan grad, was on stage talking about the allegations against the Wolverines when someone walked up, handed him a piece of paper, and walked away without a word. That person looked a whole lot like Stalions, and was dressed to look like him -- sunglasses and all.

“I’m going to change what I was saying here,” Portnoy said while looking down at the paper. “I’ve got some evidence that just came to my attention. Ryan Day is going to be suspended for longer than what Jim Harbaugh was because he has been caught cheating and in the act far worse, and I have some proof that just came to my desk, so my hot take will be that the longer, more cheating program is actually going to be the scumbags from Ohio.”

There hasn’t been any actual evidence of Ohio State cheating (unless you count Day cheating his players out of another win).

“Who just handed you that paper?” another Barstool employee asked.

“I don’t know who that was,” Portnoy said.

“It looked liked a mysterious man handed Dave a paper. I think I saw him on the Central Michigan sideline a few weeks ago.”

“Was that Connor Stalions?”

“I don’t know who that was,” Portnoy said. “I have no idea, but I would like to salute all the Marines out there. Thank you for your service.”

You can watch the sequence below.

When news of the sign-stealing operation first broke, Portnoy publicly offered Stalions a lifetime job with Barstool. It would be very on brand for him to capitalize on the interest in this story by staging unconfirmed appearances from the sign-stealer himself.

And that’s exactly what he’s done -- again, apparently.

During three of Portnoy’s famous “pizza reviews” over the weekend, that same Stalions-like figure appeared very prominently in the background. You can see those videos by clicking here and here and here.

At this point, nothing from this story should surprise us.