Text messages from a lengthy back-and-forth in early 2021 between suspended University of Michigan football staffer Connor Stalions and a then student at a Power 5 school indicate Stalions boasted of his ability to decipher opponents' signals from TV footage.
The former Power 5 student, who was looking to break into the college football industry, shared the full text conversation with Sports Illustrated, verifying the messages’ origin by removing Stalions’s name in his contacts to reveal a phone number. That number was linked to Stalions’s name on the public database WhitePages. There was no response when SI called and texted the number.
As reported by Richard Johnson of SI, Stalions’s text messages to the student provide a vivid picture of his motivations, revealing an aspiring coach obsessed with helping Michigan while looking to build his own career and one day lead the program.
Michigan has said that it is “fully cooperating with the Big Ten and NCAA” and that “At the University of Michigan, we are committed to the highest ethical and integrity standards for all members of the community.”
The specific act Stalions described — deciphering opponents’ signals off of TV footage — is not against NCAA rules. In the last week, though, Stalions "has become a household name across college football following accusations and reports that he orchestrated an elaborate scheme to place unnamed associates of his in stadiums of Michigan’s opponents to scout and, in some cases, film opposing coaches’ signals (both acts very much against the rules)," Johnson wrote.
“Pre-covid, stole opponent signals during the week watching tv copies then flew to the game and stood next to [then Michigan offensive coordinator Josh] Gattis and told him what coverage/pressure he was gettin,” Stalions texted the student at the time.
A Michigan native, Stalions officially joined the Wolverines’ staff in the spring of 2022. Johnson sited ESPN reporting that Stalions, on his now deactivated LinkedIn page, said he served as a Marine from 2017 to 2022 and, starting in 2015, also helped Michigan football as a volunteer assistant in hopes of building the platform for a future career. That was the position he apparently held during the text exchange, Johnson added.
Stalions graduated from the Naval Academy in 2017. During his time in Annapolis, he worked as a student assistant with the football team (curiously, this includes an overlap with the time his LinkedIn reportedly says he volunteered for Michigan), Johnson reported.
"Stalions, now 28, revealed that he was part of a small group of people — two of whom he said were at low-level positions on different college football coaching staffs —who were putting their heads together on a long-term plan to run the Michigan football program," Johnson wrote for SI. "Stalions claimed to have a Google document between 550 and 600 pages long that he managed daily, containing a blueprint for the Wolverines’ future. He referred the document as a movement more than a plan, dubbing it 'the Michigan Manifesto.' ”
Stalions wrote, “I think it’s pretty rare to find the right type of people who can grasp a vision of the future and want to team up and run s---. And we all got our own stuff goin on, but we all got some pretty unique approaches. Basically the way I see it, there’s a future Ohio State head coach and staff out there somewhere preparing for it whether they know it or not. And we have a group of a half dozen actively planning s--- 15 or so years out. And another dozen or two on board. So by the time it’s ready to rock, we’re all on the same page and we quickly make Michigan the ultimate standard.”
In his conversation with the student, which spanned about three weeks, Stalions described working along two tracks. One was long-term: the Michigan Manifesto. The other was short-term: creating what he called “products,” apparently meaning pieces of analysis or insight that coaches would find useful. Analysis of recruits’ GPAs and test scores, something he engaged in while at the Naval Academy, is one example.
“Basically for providing products to coaches, what I’m sayin is they have a paid staff they utilize to get what they need,” he texted, as reported by SI. “You can’t ask them what they need. You have to tell them what they need. But it can’t be up for interpretation. It has to be very straightforward, unique, and useful. If it’s not one of those 3 things, it’s pointless.”
Naval Academy associates describe Stalions as being obsessed with Michigan, where his parents had attended college, with the plan to one day coach football at the university.
