Connor Stalions documentary presents dubious plea for innocence in sign theft

If you don't have a Netflix subscription or 87 minutes to watch Sign thiefthe documentation on Connor Stallions, I would like to summarize it for you:

The obsessive fanboy dedicates his life to Michigan football, infiltrating the program and working hard to help the Wolverines win. Because he's smart and a hard worker, he carves out a niche for himself. Because he's a sneaky weasel, he goes to extremes in that niche to steal the opposing team's play signals – not that he admits to breaking any NCAA rules in the process. He gets caught and his dream job falls through, but Michigan wins the national title and Stalions joins the gang of cheaters who help make college sports so strangely fascinating.

End credits.

Go blue.

The documentary doesn't do much more than tell us who Stalions is and get the first interview with him since his name became infamous last October. It gives insight into the roots and depth of his Michigan fan base. And it gives him a platform to lay out his extremely dubious innocence of any activity that could lead to NCAA sanctions for him and his beloved Wolverines. (In a notice of allegations delivered Sunday, the NCAA is seeking a three-year ban for Stalions from coaching at that level, according to an addendum to the documentary.)

“I don't always break the rules,” Stalions said later in the documentary. “Actually, I would say I don't break the rules. I just walk a very fine line. I exploit the rules. I don't break the rules, I exploit them.”

The rules that Stalions says he did not break, despite being caught red-handed, include:

“Could it be possible that Connor was at the game? Maybe,” said his lawyer Brad Beckworth. “Whether that happened or not is something Connor himself will have to speak about.”

Stalions didn't talk much about it. In the funniest part of the documentary, he holds up a picture of Maybe Connor in disguise on the sidelines and says with a wry smile, “I don't even think that guy looks like me.”

Later, the film shows a video clip of Stalions' Zoom interview with NCAA investigators in April. When asked if he was at the Central Michigan-Michigan State game, Stalions said, “I don't remember being at the game, no.”

This reflected the attitude of former Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh when He was caught red-handed eating breakfast with a recruit during the COVID-19 break, violating NCAA rules. Harbaugh eventually acknowledged that he must have been there when a receipt said someone ordered a burger for breakfast because he was the only person who would do such a thing. But he continued to insist that he had no memory of being there.

That's apparently how a decent, open-minded Michigan man reacts when he's caught committing the kind of infractions that Michigan men used to scoff at at other schools. Just say you don't remember. It makes you wonder if the water supply at Schembechler Hall is somehow contaminated and is affecting the staff's memory.

“I didn’t get any signals from personal scouting,” Stalions said.

“I can’t remember ever asking anyone to go to a game,” he said.

“I bought tickets to many games,” he said. “Some people attended the games with the tickets I bought and recorded parts of the game. Sometimes I got footage from them.”

But, Stalions said, he did not request the film and does not need it for his job (allowed under NCAA rules) of deciphering other teams' signs.

The premise that Stalions wants to offer the world is this: He knew people who wanted to attend college football games. By pure coincidence, those games featured future or potential opponents of Michigan. For some reason, these football fans came to him to buy the tickets instead of doing it themselves. Just for fun, some of those fans decided to record the sideline action they could see. And yes, some of them sent him the video, but he didn't ask for it.

I've heard better lies.

Yahoo Sports reported last November that a Michigan booster identified by the NCAA as “Uncle T” was a suspected Stallions donor at the time.

“Honestly, I’ve never heard the name Uncle T,” Stalions said in the film.

But has he ever heard the name Tim Smith? Yahoo Sports said that was the identity of Uncle T. Smith denied funding the Stalions.

There was no further information on how the tickets were purchased or how much they cost.

That may be so, but we have received no denials, explanations, or reactions from the Stallions regarding the firing of Michigan linebackers coach Chris Partridge.

Partridge was fired on Nov. 17, in the midst of the Stalions scandal and during an undefeated season. ESPN reported at the time that Partridge had failed to comply with the NCAA investigation, citing a termination that said he “disregarded the University's directive not to discuss an ongoing NCAA investigation with anyone associated with the Michigan football program or others and has therefore been found not to have satisfactorily performed his duties.”

In the documentary, Stalions cited Partridge as the assistant who got him into Michigan to work for the program. The documentary briefly showed a picture noting Partridge's firing, but Stalions never elaborated on it.

Also, the documentary does not mention Stalions' former Michigan colleague Jake Kostner, whose status on Central Michigan's coaching staff has been the subject of speculation over the past month. Kostner, who worked as a student assistant in the 2010s when Stalions was at Michigan, is (or perhaps was) the Chippewas' quarterbacks coach. He is still listed as a staff member on the school's athletic website.

Central Michigan issued a statement Tuesday about the school's role in the documentary: “We are aware of the conclusions in the new Netflix documentary regarding former University of Michigan football staffer Connor Stalions walking onto the CMU sideline during our opening game last September. For the past 10 months, CMU has cooperated fully with the NCAA's ongoing investigation, and we will continue to cooperate with the NCAA as it works to complete its investigation.”

The Chippewas open their season Thursday night against Central Connecticut State. We'll see if Kostner is there. Or the Stalions, for that matter. He certainly seemed to be there in their opener last year.

Currently, Stalions is a volunteer assistant at Detroit's Mumford High School, coaching defense. The NCAA could seriously damage his dreams of returning to college coaching, so he may need to get used to this level of football first.

Even if his coaching career survives any NCAA sanctions, it's impossible to imagine this Michigan man ever returning to the sidelines at the Big House. That's the ironic price of an obsessive desire to help his favorite team win.