ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Connor Stalions talked about an “underground community of college football analysts,” his infamous manifesto, and the accusations of an illegal Michigan football sign-stealing operation in a new Netflix documentary.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only person in Michigan and the college football universe who got up in the middle of the night to finally hear what Stalions had to say.
Click here to watch the documentary on Netflix.
Stalions, the figure at the heart of the Michigan football sign-stealing scheme, has been largely shrouded in mystery ever since accusations started flying almost a year ago.
But now, in an 87-minute special called “Untold: Sign Stealer,” we’re finally hearing Stalions’ side of the story. Some of it, at least.
Here are my takeaways.
The Stalions family and Michigan football
Right off the bat, we learned a little background information about Stalions and his obsession with the Michigan football program.
We were also introduced to his parents: Kelly and Brock Stalions.
The documentary showed several old home videos of the Stalions family: a young Stalions playing with a football in the yard, the three of them watching Michigan games in a living room, and more.
“At a really young age, their passion for Michigan rubbed off on me right away,” Stalions said. “My mom grew up a diehard Michigan fan.”
“My passion for U of M directly, I think, transferred to Connor,” Kelly Stalions said. “We are crazed Michigan fans.”
“Connor has always been a very focused, driven kid,” Brock Stalions said. “And he knew from a young age that he wanted to be the head football coach at the University of Michigan.”
Stalions even dressed as a Michigan coach for Halloween, and the documentary showed him reciting word-for-word Bo Schembechler’s “The Team” speech.
Sign-stealing at Navy
Stalions said the reason he wanted to serve in the armed forces was because so many of the greatest coaches in history did so before taking the sideline. He specifically named Mike Krzyzewski, Gregg Popovich, John Wooden, Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, and Schembechler.
“That’s why I began to pursue the Naval Academy,” Stalions said.
He said he asked Ken Niumatalolo if he could be a student coach at Navy because he knew he wanted to be on the Michigan staff someday. That’s how he got onto his first coaching staff.
His gameday job was to try to decipher opponents’ signals.
‘The birth of signal-deciphering’
Stalions said his first game on the Navy staff came against Ohio State. He gave a basic explanation about how he tries to steal signs.
He said most teams have eight people relaying signals, but seven of them are decoys.
“I realized pretty quickly how simple it is to just know which signaler is the live signaler,” Stalions said. “You can just look at the players looking at him when they look away.
“Then you start writing down just what he does, and if you run a play twice, then, well, I’m going to know it the second time. By the third possession of the game, I’m yelling out, ‘Power right, power right.’”
He said Navy’s defensive coordinator didn’t really even know who Stalions was, but he successfully called out what Ohio State was going to run.
Navy lost 34-17.
“That was my first game, the birth of signal-deciphering in my life,” Stalions said.
How Stalions met Jim Harbaugh
Stalions said he enlisted in the Marines after graduating as part of the winningest class in Navy football history. During his time with the Marines, he said he was always thinking about returning to Michigan to coach football.
Stalions said he went to Jim Harbaugh’s coaches clinic with his dad after Harbaugh was hired as Michigan’s head coach. The date of that clinic was not specified, but it appears to have been in 2018.
During the clinic, Stalions introduced himself to linebackers coach Chris Partridge.
“I asked, ‘Is there any way I can help out next week?’” Stalions said. “He said, ‘Yeah, show up on Monday. We’ll find something for you to do.’”
He told the staff that he deciphered opponents’ signals at Navy, and Partridge said Stalions could do that for Michigan.
Coaching Michigan from California
“So, in 2018, that’s what I did,” Stalions said. “I was stationed in California. I’d go to the game, and anything I was tasked with, I would treat it like my life depended on it.”
“Here is a guy who was so dedicated to helping Michigan football that, on his own dime, he would fly to wherever Michigan was to help out,” Brock Stalions said. “He was going back and forth, taking the redeye from California to Detroit.”
Instead of driving back to his house, which was an hour away from where he worked in Camp Pendleton, Stalions would rent out his house and sleep in his car at a highway rest stop near Camp Pendleton, his father said.
“Growing up as a kid, going to over 100 Michigan games and the whole Naval Academy, Marine Corps, and sleeping in my car for a couple years -- as long as Michigan wins, that’s what I’m there for and that’s all I’m trying to do,” Stalions said.
‘Underground community of college football analysts’
Stalions said during the 2018 season, he was stealing signs from television copies of games. That season ended with Michigan losing to Ohio State and finishing 10-3.
“I get a phone call from a buddy of mine at a different school, and he says, ‘Hey, I just gave your number to so-and-so -- he’s going to call you,” Stalions said. “That’s when I learned there’s an underground community of college football analysts who will call each other on every Sunday and trade with each other anything scheme related. It could be playbooks, game plans, whatever. They make a trade and they go into the game knowing what the signals are.”
The documentary clarified that teams are allowed to try to decipher signs through game film or call friends on other staffs.
“Here Michigan is, at the bottom of this intelligence operations totem pole, and you don’t know that you’re at the bottom if you don’t have a guy who focuses on that,” Stalions said. “Based on my experience, 80-90% of teams have one of those intel operations staff members, so when I started to learn this culture of college football intelligence operations, well here I am, a captain in the Marine Corps, figuring, ‘Well, they can’t be better than I could be at this, right?’”
Stalions and others interviewed during the documentary seemed to suggest that early in the Harbaugh tenure, other teams were way ahead of Michigan in terms of sign-stealing, and that it was a significant disadvantage.
Stalions joins staff full-time
Stalions said he transitioned out of the Marine Corps in 2021 and a Michigan coach approached him about the Wolverines having their signals stolen by other teams.
Stalions said that’s when he joined the staff full-time.
“I have to step my game up and I have to be really on point,” Stalions said. “I have to treat every opponent like it’s The Game, like it’s Ohio State.”
The ability to steal signs helped Stalions rise to his position as a full-time staffer, according to the documentary.
“Signal deciphering is essentially a cat-and-mouse game,” Stalions said. “If you signal first, you are the mouse. How can we be the cat?”
Gameday sheet
Stalions explained how he would create a “gameday sheet.”
He said he recorded himself against a white wall doing every type of signal and gesture he could imagine.
“I recorded myself doing probably 2,000-3,000 signals,” Stalions said. “When I was done, I uploaded each photo into my sheet where it belonged. I developed my own database, which is the next evolution of my gameday sheet. Instead of memorizing words, I was memorizing pictures. I would say that is the No. 1 reason why I became as good as I did at deciphering signals.”
The manifesto
We’ve all heard about the fabled Connor Stalions manifesto, and he offered a brief glimpse.
Stalions said the goal was to organize everything he learned and absorbed.
“It started off as a binder,” Stalions said. “After a few months, I realized, ‘This binder’s not going to suffice, so I need to do it electronically.’ So it turned into a Word doc, and then into a Google doc, and then dozens and dozens of Google docs. Basically any thought I’ve ever had, any quote I’ve ever heard or read from a book -- probably talking about a couple thousand pages.”
For example, he showed a map of the United States that had pins for every single drafted player since 2010, as well as the data he compiled behind that map.
“I’ve created my own formula, with all these regions, and gave a score to every little thing,” Stalions said. “It just helps with strategy of knowing where to recruit.”
While Stalions gave Netflix a few quick looks at the files, he isn’t sharing everything.
“I’m not going to give it away,” Stalions said. “People say, ‘Oh, let me read the manifesto.’ I’m not going to give you the manifesto. This is competitive advantage information right here. It can create a competitive advantage over everyone else. Why scout like everyone else does?”
When the allegations came out
The first reports about Michigan being investigated for sign stealing came out on Oct. 19, 2023. The Wolverines were accused of sending someone to games involving their future opponents in order to steal their signals.
“Coach came to my office and asked me if I saw the articles,” Stalions said. “Within minutes, (investigators) took my work phone and laptop and computer, and I even asked to answer any questions. ‘What do you guys want to know? What’s going on?’ They said that wouldn’t be necessary.
“At the time, I knew I was being investigated, but no one told me exactly what for.”
He later said he received a phone call from someone in the athletic department who told him he was suspended with pay.
‘I’ve never advanced scouted’
Having someone physically attend games to tape opponents’ signals is against NCAA advanced scouting rules.
In the documentary, Stalions denied wrongdoing.
“First of all, I’ve never advanced scouted,” Stalions said. “Two, if this is about signals, I obtain signals the same way every other team does: through watching TV copies and talking to other intel guys on other teams. What set me apart was the way in which I organized that information and processed it on gameday.”
Brock Stalions claimed 90% of what was being reported and speculated was false.
‘Failure to cooperate’ with NCAA
Stalions said after he was suspended from the Michigan coaching staff, he researched lawyers who had beaten the NCAA. He ultimately hired Brad Beckworth.
“You have to understand, I hate the NCAA,” Beckworth said. “It’s a corrupt organization. It’s a hypocrite. So anytime I see somebody getting treated poorly by the NCAA, I try to take a case.”
Beckworth said he advised Stalions not to agree to a disciplinary hearing that had no real legal guidelines, especially without knowing what was going to be discussed.
That’s when reports surfaced that Stalions was failing to cooperate with the investigation, according to the documentary.
Firing vs. resigning
Stalions’ attorney said his client was willing to “throw himself on the grenade.”
“He said, ‘Listen, I’ll throw myself on the grenade for the school. I love it that much, and I just want to be treated fairly, and I promise you, I will do whatever it takes to treat the school fairly,’” Beckworth said.
He said Stalions resigned, and then Michigan leaked that Stalions had been fired. U of M then confirmed that he had resigned.
“That was the last time I heard from anyone,” Stalions said. “I went from watching football film all day everyday, prepping for practice, prepping linebacker meetings, and then, overnight, now I can’t do any of that, can’t even talk to them. Everyday, article after article after article, and there’s nothing I could do.”
He said it was “devastating” for that to be striped away.
Michigan State game
For the first game after the news broke about Stalions and the sign-stealing scheme, Michigan went to East Lansing to play Michigan State.
The documentary rehashed reports that Michigan State considered canceling the game for safety reasons, and Michigan linebacker Michael Barrett was quoted saying the Spartans “knew what was coming to them.”
Michigan State refused to signal their plays from the sideline that game, instead passing them along audibly, even though Stalions was no longer on staff.
The Wolverines won 49-0.
“I watched the game and I just kind of laughed, like, these guys ran the play in every single play and after they lost 49-0, they’re still complaining about signals, and they didn’t even signal,” Stalions said.
Central Michigan photo
The documentary didn’t provide much from Stalions on the photo that appears to show him on the sideline of the Central Michigan vs. Michigan State game on the Friday night opener in East Lansing.
At one point, Stalions held the photo up and said, “I mean, I don’t even think this guy looks like me,” with a smirk.
Later, when the NCAA asked Stalions directly if he attended the CMU-MSU game, he said, “I don’t recall attending a specific game.”
Stalions at Ohio State game
Stalions confirmed he attended Michigan’s home game against Ohio State, the first time he went to a game after leaving the program.
After the win, Stalions said he joined the fans who stormed the field. That’s when he ran into Barrett.
“I’m wearing a ski mask,” Stalions said.
“He kind of just slid it just a little bit down to his nose, and I’m, like, ‘I know that’s not who I think it is,’” Barrett said.
Stalions said Barrett gave him a hug.
Going to college football games
The documentary broke down the paper trail that proved Stalions had purchased tickets to dozens of games involving future Michigan opponents (and possible playoff opponents).
Stalions famously left his Venmo transactions public, and the documentary quoted an Ohio State message board poster who’s convinced Michigan’s coaching staff was behind the whole operation.
Stalions’ father, mother, and military friend said they just went to games because they were football fans. They said there’s no evidence that they were advanced scouting at those games.
“I guess the accusation is that my mom helped me advance scout Purdue?” Stalions said, smirking again.
He said he’s profited off of buying and selling tickets, so if a friend wants a ticket, he gets it for them.
But the number of tickets and the position of the seats (often right at the 50-yard line) makes it seem very unlikely that Stalions was simply shelling out gifts to football fans.
The question everyone wants answered: How did Stalions pay for the operation?
A Michigan booster called “Uncle T” is accused of helping to fund the operation. Stalions said he has never heard of “Uncle T.”
The topic of paying for all the tickets and transportation was not addressed further by Stalions.
Ohio State’s involvement
The documentary touched on rumors that Ohio State was behind an investigative firm that put the NCAA on the scent of Stalions and Michigan’s sign-stealing.
Beckworth said he believes Stalions’ email was hacked, because somehow the media got a spreadsheet that Stalions had never sent to anyone.
“The journalist at the Washington Post happened to go to school with Ryan Day,” Stalions said. “So you have a private investigating firm opens up an LLC in Michigan the same exact time an unnamed LLC private investigating firms hacks into my computer. I doubt that’s a coincidence.”
In the end, there was no concrete evidence provided in the documentary that links Ohio State to the case.
Stalions at national championship game
Stalions said he road tripped to Houston for the national championship game.
He said people recognized him in public and posted pictures that he was at the game.
The documentary included video of Stalions celebrating both Donovan Edwards touchdowns and the Mike Sainristil interception that sealed the game.
“Do I wish that I’d be able to be with them? Yeah,” Stalions said. “But as long as Michigan football won the national championship, as long as my brothers got to experience that, that’s all I care about.
“To see us win the national championship in person, and to just soak that moment in, I mean, yeah, I’ll never forget that.”
NCAA interview
Stalions spoke about why he ultimately agreed to an interview with the NCAA during the offseason.
“I have to do the NCAA interview, because if I don’t, then they’re going to assume everything that they’re currently assuming, which is completely false,” Stalions said. “And, one, likely punish Michigan for it, and, two, punish me. So I need to provide the context that the NCAA needs.”
During footage from the NCAA interview, Stalions said he did receive film from some of the people who used his tickets.
“It’s kind of like when your aunt gets you a Christmas present that you already have,” Stalions said. “You’re not going to be rude and be like, ‘Oh, I already have this. I don’t need it.’ You just, ‘Oh, thanks, appreciate it.’ They feel like they’re helping out or whatever when I already have the signals. I already memorized the signals. So I just say, ‘Thanks, whatever.’”
Did anyone know?
The documentary didn’t directly address whether anybody else in the Michigan football program knew what Stalions was doing.
While it seems unlikely that nobody else inside Schembechler Hall was aware of what was going on, Stalions must not have answered those questions for Netflix.
‘I don’t regret a thing’
Here’s how Stalions signed off at the end of the documentary:
“I don’t always break the rules. In fact, I would argue I don’t break the rules. I just walk a very fine line in the gray. I exploit the rules. I don’t break the rules, I exploit them.
“I don’t regret a thing. Every single day, I treated it like, ‘This day depends on Michigan winning the national championship.’
“And I would do the same thing over again.”
