Breaking News :Exciting news for college football fans, Netflix has officially released a highly anticipated documentary focused on the Michigan Wolverines.
Breaking News :Exciting news for college football fans, Netflix has officially released a highly anticipated documentary focused on the Michigan Wolverines.
On Tuesday, college football fans from around the country tuned in to hear the “sign stealer” in his own words. Connor Stalions, the former Michigan football staff member who became the center of an NCAA investigation, finally shared his version of the story in a Netflix documentary that left far more questions than answers. Although we did get a little more insight into his background and his love for Michigan football, Stalions came far short of providing anything of substance on key questions surrounding the sign-stealing controversy.
In spite of what I think about his conduct, his response to the controversy, and the documentary itself, I’ve got to give Connor Stalions his flowers when it comes to his work ethic and dedication to the art of sign-stealing. I don’t doubt Stalions when he says that 80-90% of programs around the country have someone whose focus is to decode signals, but I’m quite comfortable in saying that none of those folks are as dedicated, detailed, and downright obsessed with the process as Stalions appears to be. Although we didn’t get a detailed look at what was inside that 1,000+ page manifesto, we did get to see some of the quotes, the notes, and an interactive map of draft picks over the last 10-years. Love him or hate him, Connor Stalions is an elite sign-stealer.
For as detailed and dedicated as he is to the process of stealing-signs, his selective memory on key events raises too many red flags. He can remember thousands of signals and act them out in his garage in front of a cellphone camera, yet he can’t remember whether or not he was standing on the Central Michigan sideline last season? He can’t remember which individuals sent him cellphone videos? I’m not buying it, and neither is the NCAA. There are some who think the best pathway forward here is for Stalions to hold his ground and to force the NCAA to prove its case. There are others, myself included, who think honesty up front would have prevented this from becoming one of the biggest (and most overblown) scandals in college football history.
Interestingly enough, Stalions himself admitted that the videos he received from those who were attending games on his behalf were useless. At one point in the documentary, he compared it to your aunt buying you a gift that you already have.
“I’ve had a friend send me film,” Stalions said. “And it’s kind of like when your aunt gets you a Christmas present that you already have. You’re not going to be rude and be like, ‘oh, I already have this, I don’t need it.’ You know? It’s just like, ‘thanks, appreciate it.’ You know, they feel like they’re helping out or whatever, when I already have the signals. I’ve already memorized the signals. So I just say, ‘thanks,’ whatever. You know?”
If that was truly how he felt about what he was gaining from the cellphone videos he’d receive, then why do it in the first place? Keep in mind, the accusation against Stalions isn’t that he just sent a few friends to a few games to record some video. Reporting suggests that a spreadsheet was recovered (or hacked) from his computer that shows a detailed schedule of games, names, and who was attending what. That seems like a lot of effort to go through for something that was essentially useless to you.
Overall, I think Stalions could have been an elite sign-stealer without “exploiting the rules” or living in that gray area, as he put it. But it’s clear that he had big goals of one day running the Michigan football program, and it certainly seems that those personal ambitions led him to take unnecessary risks.
