One of the biggest scandals in recent college football history is currently unfolding in Ann Arbor, Michigan while the Wolverines are currently at the center of a sign-stealing investigation. Now suspended staffer Connor Stalions allegedly led an expansive operation that extended across the Big Ten and even into the College Football Playoff.
The 28-year-old went from complete anonymity to a household name among fans of the sport. He is a Wolverines superfan who “grew up his entire life with a vision to coach football at Michigan” and dedicated his entire life to that goal. He even declined admission to the university to attend the Naval Academy instead because Bill Belichick and Bo Schembechler went there.
A pretty wild story from Sport Illustrated’s Richard Johnson details Stalions’ expansive blueprint to one day lead the football program. He wrote a Google Doc of more than 550 pages in length called the ‘Michigan Manifesto’ and thought that sign-stealing would be his chance to get in the door.
Stalions was ultimately right. Sign-stealing helped him get involved with the team.
It is now his downfall.
According to Pete Thamel, Stalions purchased tickets to four different games of four College Football Playoff contenders in 2022. There is record of Stalions purchasing tickets to the SEC Championship in 2021 and 2022. 12 of the 13 Big Ten schools have confirmed that Stalions purchased tickets directly from their respective university ticketing systems.
John Brice of FootballScoop also reported that “Michigan may have attempted to assist the opposition of a potential CFP opponent in an effort to disrupt that team’s potential path to the Playoff.” Some fans have hypothesized that South Carolina’s win over Tennessee may be involved, though that is strictly speculation.
Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal is hilariously insulting for one Big Ten program.
All of this goes to say that Stalions went above and beyond to run an expansive scouting operation. It is believed — if not confirmed — that sign-stealing was involved.
Stalions and the Wolverines had people doing their dirty work all over the country.
They had people at Big Ten games. They had people at SEC games. The list goes on.
However, only 12 of the 13 Big Ten teams have it on record that Stalions purchased tickets from their school. What about the 13th school?!
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Stalions didn’t use other means to buy tickets to the attend a game at the 13th school, but he was using the schools’ ticketing websites for every other game. Why wouldn’t he take the same approach?
If it is true that Stalions and Michigan only “scouted” 12 of 13 schools, it is a tough look for whichever program didn’t warrant the visit. The Wolverines didn’t want to spend the money to scout a team that it could beat without scouting. Maybe Northwestern?