What we learned about Michigan football during ‘Sign Stealer’ documentary on Netflix

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The most anticipated response in college football has finally been revealed in the Connor Stalions “Sign Stealer” documentary on Netflix, and so far, this is what we have learned.

Like most fans of the Michigan Wolverines, Stalions grew up bleeding maize and blue, thanks to his parents, who raised him in Lake Orion, where he graduated high school.

His parent’s passion for Michigan rubbed off on him as his mom is a die-hard Michigan Wolverines fan.

In his yearbook, he said he wanted to be a good role model and leader and set a good example. He knew he wanted to coach football since the age of three.

“My passion for U of M directly transferred to Connor,” said his mother, Kelly, in the documentary. “We are crazed Michigan fans.”

At one point in the documentary, Connor is crying tears of joy after watching his Wolverines win the national championship in 1997.

“Connor has always been a very focused, driven kid, and he knew from a young age that he wanted to be a head football coach at the University of Michigan, said Connors’s father, Brock Stalions.

On Halloween, Connor was seen impersonating Wolverines legendary head coach, Bo Schembechler. He was dressed like him and held a playboard and marker, drawing up plays while wearing the coach’s headset.

“He wore like these headphones that resembled a headset because he was Bo Schembechler for Halloween,” Kelly said.

Schembechler was his guy; he took to heart what he said during his team speech in 1983.

“We want the Big Ten championship, and we’re going to win it as a Team,” Schembechler said. “No man is more important than The Team. No coach is more important than The Team. The Team, The Team, The Team, everything that you do, you take into consideration what effect does it have on my Team? After you leave here. You will never play for a Team again. You’ll play for a contract. You’ll play for this. You’ll play for that. You’ll play for everything except the team; when the old season is over, you and I know it’s going be Michigan again, Michigan.”

While still fulfilling his head coaching dreams, Connor joined the Naval Academy after high school because he read that 15 of the top 20 coaches of all time, including Mike Krzyzewski, Gregg Popovich, John Wooden, Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, and his hero, Schembechler served in the military.

While in the Navy, he went to the head coach, Ken Niumatalolo, and asked if he could be a student coach so he could someday coach at Michigan.

Niumatalolo walked him into the offensive coordinator’s office and said here’s your new student coach.

Connor later said he asked a staff member what he was to do during game days and was told to try to decipher opposing players’ signs. By happenstance, his first game learning to sign steal came against Ohio State in 2014.

He graduated from the Navy and joined the United States Marines as a logistics officer, earning the rank of captain, but he still had hopes of joining Michigan’s staff.

After the Marines, he returned home to Michigan, where he attended a massive coaches’ clinic with his father, Brock.

There, he met with former linebackers coach Chris Partridge, who told him to show up on the following Monday.

Connor told Partridge that he deciphered signals for the Navy football team, and Partridge said, “Yeah, sure, we don’t have anyone doing that.”

While stationed on the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California, in 2018, he said he would go to Michigan games on his dime and would fly wherever Michigan was to assist the football program as an Intel Operations Volunteer Staff member for three years while serving in the Marines.

While stationed he would meet with the team and stand on the sideline to decipher signals.

After a period of time, Connor created sign-stealing sheets on opponents the Wolverines faced, totaling nearly 3,000 references to deciphering signals by videotaping himself, then cutting out images of himself, and memorizing them.

Connor said that after the 2018 season, he received a call from a buddy, saying he had given his number to someone who informed him about an underground community of college football analysts who’d call each other on Sundays to trade playbooks and schemes before the team takes on the past weeks opponent and go into the following week with their signs as they’re facing that opponent.

At this point, the most known unknown was that each team had a person in charge of stealing signs, which was not illegal, as 90% of teams had one.

During 2018-2020, Jim Harbaugh barely beat Michigan State and was getting boat raced by Ohio State.

Harbaugh’s job was on the line heading into the 2021 season, as he took a pay cut to stay with the team.

Partridge told Connor that Michigan didn’t have a sign stealer, and Connor explained how other schools did and how they knew Michigan’s plays on both sides of the ball.

If you have ever been to a game years prior and heard the defense yelling “Run” or “Pass,” or teams knowing when the blitz was coming, according to Connor, a coach on the staff asked him how to protect their signals moving forward.

Connor becomes a full-time staff member in 2021, creating a network to ensure a level playing field, and the rest is history.

It’s hard to prove or deny Connor’s impact on the 2021 season, but the program turned around from that year until now.

There’s a video of him pointing up when opposing offenses are passing the football, but again, sign stealing was not illegal, so everything was fair game.

When the Wolverines beat Ohio State in the Big House that season, finished 12-2, won the Big Ten title, and lost to Georgia in the College Football Playoff, the team finally knew they were up to something great.

Could it have been due to better recruiting tactics, Stalions, or both? Only one can assume.

In 2022, Connor was awarded a game ball, given to him by Harbaugh after the Wolverines 2022 victory against Iowa, for decoding their signals.

Stalions’ innovative mindset played some role in the team’s success until the MSU game last season when the alleged scandal made headline news.

They then retired Nick Saban after beating Alabama in the Rose Bowl and capturing the National Championship after beating Washington, finishing 15-0 without their sign-stealer.

After he was let go or resigned from the team, with all the scrutiny, the Wolverines without Stalions, going into their toughest matchups, ran the table, routing MSU on the road, beating Penn State and Maryland on the road, and then taking down Ohio State at home.

“First of all, one, I never advanced scouted and two, I obtain signals the same way the other team does through watching TV copies and talking to other intel guys on other teams,” Connor said.

Stalions’ unusual purchase of tickets to 30 games, including 11 at Big Ten stadiums, over the last three years was at the center of the investigation.

Connor claims he bought tickets to games because he likes watching college football.

Officials said an outside law firm investigated Michigan, which led to the discovery of documents of games scouted and people being paid to scout them who had ties to Stalions.

Stalions alleged his personal computer was hacked for information. On April 24, 2024, the NCAA interviewed him regarding its ongoing investigation, and he denied the allegations.

Ultimately, NCAA President Charlie Baker said that the Wolverines football national championship was earned fair and square.

His organization’s unusual decision to share information about cheating allegations during the season was to help eliminate doubt about the legitimacy of Michigan’s national championship run.