Earlier this week, the impeccable and highly talented National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) sent out a 74 (!) page report documenting the dirty deeds of the infamous Connor Stalions. For those who are entirely uninterested in college football and thus profoundly unaware, Stalions is a former University of Michigan football staffer.
Stalions purported crime? Doing something that was permitted by the NCAA but in ways that were not quite permitted.
If you’re a Michigan State fan, you hate him. If you’re an Ohio State fan, I’m not sure why you’re reading the Enjoyer, but you hate him, too. But even if you’re a Michigan fan, Stalions is a bit of an embarrassment.
And yet, all you Big Ten fellows are wrong. Connor Stalions is a Michigan hero.
What Is Sign-Stealing?
Full disclosure: I’m a 100% Wolverines fan. That said, I’m also very talented at being 100% impartial.
So what did Connor Stalions actually do? Here’s the skinny as explained to a third grader:
In the game of football, each team comes up with a plan of attack. To share what parts of the plan the team with the ball should do at which times, the team comes up with a bunch of symbols and signs so that they know what to do without having to get together and talk about it. It’s like a code in war.
And where there’s code, there are code-breakers.
Fortunately, the NCAA isn’t so inept and dull-witted to make attempting to “break the code” illegal. In fact, sign-stealing, as it’s called, is actually allowed. You can do this by observing and following patterns during the game, recognizing how players stand on the field, even looking across and seeing what hand signal, flag waving, or cartoon placard the opposing team is holding up and when.
But the NCCA has found ways to clutch its pearls.
You see, the NCAA cares a lot about being fair. It would be unfair for schools with larger budgets to, say, send someone to attend other football games and note patterns in their signs. It would be unfair to bring a camera, since we still live in the era of expensive camcorders that only the very wealthy schools can afford instead of everyone having a literal high-definition camera in their pockets at all times.
No, that would be unfair to less-wealthy schools, which is why the NCAA also bans one school having a bigger stadium than others, a better recruiting class, more scholarship money, or more NIL cash to throw around. Right.
Colleges and universities have long known this is absurd and fake. In 2013, NCAA members schools voted 55% to 45% to allow the above forms of “advanced scouting,” but due to the NCCA’s Expert Bureaucratic System, the vote fell short of the obviously necessary 62% (more than a majority, but still not a “supermajority”) needed to put the practice into effect.
What Did Stalions Actually Do?
Stalions bought tickets to other football games and had people allegedly record team signs that he could decipher. Stalions then took things to the next level and—for some reason that actually isn’t all that clear given what must have been poorer sightlines than in the stands—parked himself on the Central Michigan sideline to observe the signs used by Central’s opponent, Michigan State.
The accusation, therefore, is that Stalions didn’t just keep his observations to himself for his own amusement but either used them to inform his coaching or shared them with others in the Michigan program to the Wolverines’ advantage.
The degree to which other Michigan staff and then-head coach Jim Harbaugh were aware of what Stalions was doing, or if they even knew Stalions had some uncanny skill? The 74-page NCCA report does not know.
Nevertheless, here’s a $20-$30 million fine, more suspensions for Michigan’s new head coach Sherrone Moore (because he’s friends with Harbaugh?), and the posthumous execution of Harbaugh not unlike that of Oliver Cromwell (a 10+ year ban from college sports, despite Harbaugh now coaching in the NFL, is just like digging up Cromwell’s body, burning it, and hanging his head from a bridge for seven years).
Why Stalions Deserves a Statue in Ann Arbor (or Lansing)
First, Stalions is an actual hero. Missing from all of this background is what Stalions was doing before joining Michigan’s staff. Raised in Lake Orion, Stalions graduated from the United States Naval Academy and then served for five years in the United States Marine Corps, reaching the rank of captain. He was honorably discharged in 2022.
Second, Stalions is a winner. In war, you break the code. Teams do it all the time. Stalions did what most schools had voted 10 years earlier to do. He used his own eyes, ears, and brain. He recognized patterns. He took notes. He used his iPhone footage. Big deal.
Third, Stalions is a diehard. I’m not a diehard, and I wouldn’t dress up and go onto another team’s sidelines. But one has to love the commitment. It’s next level. There’s also a not-negligible chance that getting onto Central’s sidelines to watch Michigan State was an idea concocted after a few beers at a bar, a “wouldn’t it be awesome if” kind of moment (like I said, the sightlines couldn’t have been better than the bleachers). The man’s an All-American Bro.
Why Michigan Needs More Connor Stalions
But at the end of the day, Connor Stalions should go down in history as a rare phenomenon amongst Michiganders.
When I lived in Minnesota for a few years, everyone talked about “Minnesota Nice”: You be nice and follow the rules, but you judge hard behind that smile. In Michigan, I reflected, it’s worse. It borders on sloth, though I might charitably call it being nice out of despair or numbness.
Michigan has been ruled for decades, even under Gov. Rick Snyder, by inane and asinine bureaucratic rules, enforced by their sheer abundance and stupidness and delivered in lecturing and condescending tones by schoolmarms like Jennifer Granholm, Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benson, Danna Nessel, and Dayna Polehanki.
We’re stuck with the high taxes and the exorbitant vehicle registrations and the “rope-off-the-garden-section-with-yellow-police-tape” Covid dictated, almost out of despair, while the damned roads don’t get fixed and the schools can’t teach kids to read and the money disappears.
And the Michigander generally goes along with it all, following the rules no matter how dumb, contradictory, or ineffective they are, while putting the same people in charge.
Even if you’re not a Wolverines fan and hate that Stalions wasn’t on your team, Michigan government under Democrats and former Democrats is the NCAA. Michigan would be a better place if more of its citizens and voters were like Stalions: bold, ingenious, and die-hard winners who saw dumb rules for the fakery that they are.
Here’s hoping more Michiganders will think like Connor Stalions and turn this ship around. Until then, Connor Stalions is the heroic figure Michigan needs.
Jordan Adams is an independent education consultant in southern Michigan.
