If you don’t have a Netflix subscription or 87 extra minutes to watch sign thiefConnor Stallions documentary, let me sum it up for you:
A Michigan football fan devotes his life to the team, trying to ingratiate himself with the team and help the Wolverines win by any means possible. Smart and hardworking, he has carved out a niche for himself. And because he is a con man, that niche includes going to extraordinary lengths to steal play signals from opposing teams—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 Stallion joins the ranks of con artists who help make college sports strangely attractive.
List of credits.
Go blue.
The documentary doesn’t do much beyond tell us who Stallion is, and provide his first interview since his name became infamous last October. It also provides insight into the roots and depth of his Michigan fandom. And it gives him a platform to make his highly questionable case for his innocence of any activity that could lead to NCAA sanctions against him and his beloved Wolverines. (In a notice of allegations filed Sunday, the NCAA is seeking a three-year ban on Stallion coaching at that level, according to the documentary’s appendix.)
“I don’t always break the rules,” Stallion says late in the documentary. “In fact, I would argue that I don’t break the rules. I just walk a very fine line in the gray area. I exploit the rules. I don’t break the rules, I exploit them.”
Among the rules Stallion said he never broke, despite being nearly caught red-handed:
“Is it possible that Conor was at that game? Maybe,” said his lawyer, Brad Beckworth. “Whether or not that happened is up to Conor to talk about.”
Stallion didn’t talk much about it. In the most entertaining part of the documentary, he held up a photo of Maeby Connor on the sidelines in disguise and said with a wry smile, “I don’t think that guy looks like me.”
Later, the film shows a video of Stallion’s Zoom interview with NCAA investigators in April. When asked if he attended the Central Michigan-Michigan State game, Stallion said, “I don’t remember being at the game, no.”
This mirrored the position of former Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh when he He was caught violating NCAA rules by having breakfast with a recruit during the coronavirus shutdown. Harbaugh eventually admitted he was there when the receipt showed someone ordered a burger for breakfast, because he was the only person who would do that. But he insisted he had no recollection of being there.
This seems to be how a Michigan man responds when he gets arrested for the kind of violations that Michigan men used to make fun of at other schools. Just say you don’t remember. It makes you wonder if the water supply in Schembechler Hall has somehow become contaminated and is affecting the memories of the staff.
“I didn’t get any signals from personal polling,” Stallion said.
“I don’t remember ever directing someone to go to a game,” he said.
“I bought tickets for many matches, and there are some people who attended the matches using the tickets I bought and recorded parts of the match, and sometimes I received films from them,” he said.
But Stallion said he didn’t ask for the film and didn’t need it to do his (permissible, under NCAA rules) job of deciphering other teams’ signals.
The premise that Stallion is asking the world to buy into is this: He knew people who wanted to attend college football games; by coincidence, those games involved future opponents, or potential opponents, of Michigan; and for some reason, those football fans came to him to buy tickets instead of doing so themselves; just for fun, some of those fans decided to record what was happening on the sidelines where they were stationed to watch; and yes, some of them sent him the video but he didn’t ask for it.
I’ve heard better lies than that.
Yahoo Sports reported last November that A Michigan supporter identified by the NCAA as “Uncle T” was at the time an alleged financial backer of the Stallions.
“Honestly, I’d never heard of Uncle T,” Stallion said in the film.
But has he heard of Tim Smith? Yahoo Sports says it’s his uncle T. Smith’s name. Smith denied funding Stallion.
There weren’t many details on how to buy tickets or how much they cost.
Maybe so, but we haven’t even received a denial, explanation or reaction from the Stallions regarding the firing of Michigan linebackers coach Chris Partridge.
Partridge was terminated on November 17, amid the Stallions scandal and during his undefeated season. ESPN reported at the time that Partridge had failed to comply with the NCAA investigation.citing a termination notice that said he had “failed to comply with the University’s directive not to discuss the ongoing NCAA investigation with anyone associated with the Michigan football program or others, and as a result it has been determined that you have failed to perform your duties satisfactorily.”
In the documentary, Stallion cited Partridge as the assistant who helped him get into the University of Michigan to work on the program. The documentary briefly showed a video clip indicating Partridge was fired, but Stallion never addressed the matter.
The documentary also doesn’t mention Jake Costner, Stallion’s former Michigan teammate, whose status on Central Michigan’s coaching staff has been the subject of speculation over the past month. Costner, who was a student assistant in the 2000s while Stallion was at Michigan, is (or may have been) the Chippewa quarterbacks coach. He is still listed as a faculty member on the school’s athletic website..
Central Michigan University released a statement Tuesday addressing the school’s role in the documentary: “We are aware of the findings in the new Netflix documentary regarding former University of Michigan football player Connor Stallion’s intrusion into the University of Michigan sidelines during our home opener last September. Over the past 10 months, Central Michigan University has fully cooperated with the ongoing NCAA investigation, and we will continue to cooperate with the NCAA as it completes its investigation.”
The Chippewas open their season on Thursday against Central Connecticut State. We’ll see if Kostner shows up for the game. Or the Stallions, for example. He certainly showed up for last year’s opener.
Currently, Stallion is a volunteer assistant at Detroit Mumford High School, where he coaches the defensive line. The NCAA could seriously damage any dreams he has of returning to college coaching, so he might want to get used to that level of football.
Even if his coaching career outlasts any NCAA sanctions, it’s impossible to imagine the Michigan man ever returning to the Big House. That’s the ironic price he paid for his unquenchable desire to help his favorite team win.
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