AFTER SUSPENDING AN ALLEGED SIGN-STEALER, MICHIGAN LOOKING BLEAK
The athletic director has no use for Connor Stalions, a Marine Corps decoder who identifies “the opponent’s most dangerous course of action,” and coach Jim Harbaugh must be wondering about his future
In the Law Quad, where neo-Gothic buildings provide students with libraries and clubs and dormitories, future Michigan attorneys could bury the football quandary. Put away the beer. Save the facepaint. Investigate the obvious.
If the school’s athletic director has suspended a staffer named Connor Stalions — a retired captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, who raved on a deactivated LinkedIn bio that he’s an expert at “identifying the opponent’s most likely course of action and most dangerous course of action” and “exploiting critical vulnerabilities” — wouldn’t it indicate that he stole signs for the Wolverines? Why blow out Stalions if what he’s doing is legitimate?
And if the NCAA is eyeing coach Jim Harbaugh in an accusational balls-out period, wouldn’t the action by Warde Manuel be a disclosure that the university has a problem with such a savant during games? If the program has done nothing wrong, the administration would defend Stalions and his military deciphering. But he appears to be scoping other teams, after two years of working for Harbaugh at $55,000 per, and if his skill is bedeviling rivals as part of an elaborate network, might a school known for high academia be tired of this scheming leader of Big House men?
Only Harbaugh, who thinks he’s smarter than the rest of the coaching field, would hire Stalions for a corrupt role. He is that immersed in winning a national championship when it seemed that never would happen. The NCAA is doing more than dogging him with a four-game suspension, which he handled internally with a three-game ban, and this week’s widely publicized investigation of sign-stealing. It is using the media to send harsh signals — the Stalions rage was run by ESPN, with the original story spun by Yahoo Sports. The scouting of opponents at games would be a violation of Bylaw 11.6.1, which prohibits “off-campus, in-person scouting of future opponents” via electronic communications since 1994.
Are we to think Stalions sat in an office at Schembechler Hall and studied film all day? Doesn’t Harbaugh have a battalion of people to handle those duties? The coaches who’ve exposed him with the NCAA and Big Ten Conference say he has a startling mastery of quickly decoding signals. Back on Sept. 23, when Michigan was en route to a 31-7 win, Rutgers coach Greg Schiano made a halftime mention of strange activity. “There’s some stuff going on out there, so we got to slow it down a little bit,” he said on the Big Ten Network interview. “There’s some things going on that aren’t right as well, so we’ll talk about how to handle it.”
Is this why Michigan finally is out of national misery, made a semifinal run last season and should be a College Football Playoff entry this time? All because of Stalions, whose computer work is being sought by the NCAA’s enforcement ring? Why was such an uncommon hire made by Harbaugh? He hasn’t said anything, nor has Manuel. “I do not have any knowledge or information regarding the University of Michigan football program illegally stealing signals, nor have I directed any staff member or others to participate in an off-campus scouting assignment,” said the coach, who said he doesn’t “condone or tolerate anyone doing anything illegal or against NCAA rules."
But Harbaugh has a way of making rules work in his manner, which has angered the college coaching fraternity from which he remains aloof. Most teams wouldn’t be badgered by such threats. But then, most coaches wouldn’t employ Stalions out of frickin’ nowhere. “I have no awareness of anyone on our staff having done that or having directed that action,” Harbaugh said in his statement. “… No matter what program or organization that I have led throughout my career, my instructions and awareness of how we scout opponents have always been firmly within the rules.”
So now the U.S. Marine Corps captain, after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, has left the Wolverines as they’re off to East Lansing for a Saturday night brain-fry with Michigan State. Except, of course, he’s still being paid.
The discussion at Law Quad would be fascinating. Maybe they would invite Ann Coulter to join from the past. She wrote Friday, “More and more people are noticing that immigration has us barreling toward becoming a third world hellhole,” so she’s probably busy. But you never know.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.