DETROIT -- Connor Stalions certainly doesn't project as the most hated man in college football -- not on the Mumford High School practice field last week, where he was suddenly an accidental head coach.
To the Mustangs under his charge, he's just another football taskmaster barking orders during three hours of meetings and practice the night before a game.
"Coach should not beat y'all," Stalions screamed at his players.
In fact, the head coach did just that to some of the stragglers during sprints. The 28 players dressed out were dragging, but they were also learning. So was the coach leading them, best known for allegedly stealing signs as a Michigan staffer. Turns out you can't thieve the process either.
Two hours before the season opener on Aug. 29, it was determined the starting center was never actually enrolled. The wrong summer school classes had sidelined the left tackle, according to a school official briefed on both situations.
On Friday, Mumford lost to Flint Hamady 60-0.
"This is what I told the team," Stalions began. "An apple tree has roots, a trunk and apples. You can't focus on the apples. If you watered the apples, you wouldn't have any apples; you'd have rotten roots."
Right now, the Mustangs are rooted in inefficiency. They have been outscored 107-6 through the first two games. Adding the misery on a rainy Friday night, game film shows that officials erroneously missed a down and Mumford turned the ball over on downs instead of facing fourth down. The rain might as well been dripping with irony too. From that same film you can clearly see -- and steal if you chose -- Mumford's signs from their sideline.
Less than a year earlier, Stalions was on the staff of a national champion. Less than a day after his Mustangs were smacked around, Stalions was a curio -- asked to pose for pictures as he wound his way around Michigan Stadium during Saturday's Texas game.
"Look at Michigan; you could easily blame this on Sherrone," Stalions, the fan, said. "Well, let's be real. Losing J.J. McCarthy, Blake Corum and 11 other draft picks to the NFL makes a difference.
"My opinion of it from a fan perspective is the way that this team responds in the next couple of weeks will show that the culture remains. They're just caught in transition right now."
Such is the state of the Mustangs, Michigan, Stalions and, in a way, college football as the central figure in an NCAA investigation settles into the afterlife of a scandal.
"We wanted the Michigan defense," said William McMichael, Mumford's head coach, explaining why he hired Stalions as defensive coordinator in the offseason.
Mumford and McMichael got much more than that. They got an acting head coach with baggage -- loads of it. Stalions was elevated when McMichael suffered what he termed a "mild stroke" on Aug. 30. In hiring Stalions during the offseason, McMichael jokingly stuck that "most hated" label on his defensive coordinator.
"It was fascinating," Mumford parent Kevin Dexter said of Stalions while watching his son practice. "If you go through all that and learn all that, what is the big fuss for?"
That's for the coteries of coaching -- and the NCAA -- to decide. Meanwhile, the current state of affairs not only features Connor Stalions but is also a reflection of his coaching life. And as of now, he's not getting paid a dime to live it as a volunteer coach.
The NCAA continues to investigate Michigan in the celebrated sign-stealing scandal. Stalions has been accused of orchestrating an elaborate advance scouting scheme that might have gone as deep as monitoring Georgia in the College Football Playoff, according to a Big Ten investigation, just in case Michigan met the Bulldogs in the postseason.
Two sources familiar with the details of the current NCAA investigation told CBS Sports not to expect a verdict from the NCAA on the sign-stealing investigation until perhaps next spring. Former Michigan assistants Jesse Minter and Denard Robinson are reportedly expected to cooperate with the NCAA before then in a negotiated resolution. Minter is the defensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Chargers. Robinson's time with Michigan ended in the spring; he was arrested for allegedly operation a vehicle while intoxicated in April.
At this point, Stalions and his team of lawyers seem poised to go through the full enforcement process.
Meanwhile, Stalions has been busy digging into his own pocket. Two days before the season opener at home, Mumford didn't have a PA system or an announcer. One had to be fixed. The other had to be hired. The chain gang left at halftime, and replacements had to be called down from the stands.
Elsewhere, Stalions is trying to rebuild whatever he was before becoming social media's most popular name search since Taylor Swift. The stated passion of the 29-year-old, who spent thousands of dollars to travel to Michigan games and write an 1,000-plus-page "manifesto" about that passion, remains one day becoming Michigan's head coach.
CBS Sports made it easy for him by asking: What about ever coaching in college again?
"I hope," Stalions said. "I get a lot of support from various people about eventually bringing me back [to Michigan]."
A show-cause penalty hangs in the air. The NCAA's scarlet letter makes its recipients virtually unhirable.
For now, that particular penalty is moot with Harbaugh coaching in the NFL. Around Michigan, it is a scandal not yet resolved. Stalions is planning his next steps.
At the end of the documentary "Sign Stealer," a three- to five-year show-cause penalty for Stalions is mentioned but not substantiated. And the NCAA certainly isn't commenting further in one of the most compelling enforcement cases in the history of the organization.
It should be no surprise that Stalions has already researched the history of show causes.
"Most of the ones that are longer are gambling-related," he said.
This isn't that by any stretch, but the allegations as laid out by the Big Ten and the NCAA do strike to the integrity of the game. Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti had a decision to make last fall when suspending Harbaugh for the final three regular-season games. He could have angered the 13 other Big Ten schools, livid over what had occurred -- and risk losing his job at some point over it -- or anger Michigan.
NCAA rules allow the gamesmanship that is in-game sign stealing, but its rules prohibit in-person advance scouting to steal signs.
"What is advance scouting?" Stalions asked rhetorically.
That goes to the heart of the matter. So far, Stalions and his high-powered attorneys are cooperating with the NCAA to the point he sat for a formal interview with enforcement staff earlier this year.
That was at least one shocking revelation from "Sign Stealer." The Stalions camp not only recorded the NCAA interview that lasted approximately 2 ½ hours but also put it in the documentary. A small portion of the interview appears at the end of the documentary.
It is believed a recorded NCAA interview in such a high-profile case has never been made public before then. Sources told CBS Sports that Stalions did not sign a confidentiality agreement regarding the interview when asked by the NCAA.
It might be logical to figure Stalions' angle in defending himself. The NCAA bylaw against advance scouting does not mention filming. Its rules also prohibit cases being spoken about publicly by those being investigated. But the association seems to have blown the seal on that itself. NCAA Vice President Derrick Crawford surprisingly reacted to the initial investigation of Michigan in August 2023.
"The Michigan infractions case is related to impermissible on- and off-campus recruiting during the COVID-19 dead period and impermissible coaching activities -- not a cheeseburger," Crawford said.
So much for a fair hearing?
One of the more damning accusations in the sign-stealing case is that Michigan coach Sherrone Moore wiped his phone of 52 text messages with Stalions. Those messages have since been restored, and Moore has said he looks forward to resolving the case.
"I don't even know what I would have texted him, 'Hey coach, so-and-so [recruit] is coming to your office right now?'" Stalions said.
A friend recently suggested to Stalions that this whole situation had been a lesson in the Ten Commandments.
"'Thou shall not put [false] idols before God,'" Stalions summarized. "He said, 'You're putting too much focus on football, and it gets stripped away from you.'"
During the course of a 100-minute interview with CBS Sports, it's clear that Stalions could take the knowledge he has about football (and, yes, sign stealing) and easily land a job on any college or NFL staff. His phone is chock-full of videos, formations and stuff that teams would kill for.
"Yeah," Stalions said, "but I want to coach."
He's that good at stealing signs -- legally, of course, until proven otherwise. Minutes into his first game as a student volunteer coach at Navy in 2014, Stalions spotted Ohio State's tendencies. The sophomore began barking out what play was coming from the sideline. A savant was born.
"I would argue," Stalions said, "I know I can provide value to a program."
All of it leads to the obvious question: Are you the best at what you do?
"Yeah," Stalions said. "Do you need to hear that? No. Don't care."
What exactly does Stalions do? That's what the NCAA is trying to determine. Adding to the mystery, seven of Michigan's 15 wins last season came after he resigned.
Ten years after debuting with Navy, Stalions is starting over at the bottom rung of coaching. Maybe it's fitting that the same school (Mumford) that produced the character Roseanne Roseannadanna (comedian Gilda Radner), Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Top Gun," "Pirates of the Caribbean") and Axel Foley (Mumford was the fictional high school of Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop character) is being led by a coach whose exploits would be at home on TMZ.
More revelations:
- Stalions says there is a Big Ten team that will remain nameless that has used the same signals since 2020, over the course of multiple coaches.
- Stalions claims there are schools that have secretly used Bluetooth technology prior to the rule change to helmet communications with players in the field. Is that as bad as what he was accused of doing? "Worse," Stalions said.
- For a guy who, in the documentary, bragged about memorizing 2,000 play-calling signs, how could he not remember whether he was at the Central Michigan opener last season? There are screen shots of what is reportedly Stalions in disguise as the Chippewas played Michigan State. The NCAA is investigating that, too. The NCAA asked Stalions about it in the documentary. "I've been to 200 college games in my life. You're asking me about specific games? That's what I told [the NCAA]," Stalions told CBS Sports.
- Regarding being able to afford travel to Michigan games each week while stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego: Stalions said he had invested in property he had bought in Orange County, Calif. Renting the house out as an Airbnb allowed Stalions to make what he said was mid-four figures per month. "Google how much a Marine Corps captain makes in California," Stalions said, "And what a VA loan is." The Veterans Administration allows zero down payment for home loans for military members. That explains how Stalions made some money. How he spent it in this case is another matter.
- Teams routinely swap film in an age-old tradition. From that film, signs can be discerned. No big deal there, but Stalions said staffers also trade playbooks. They'll say, 'I got fired from this school, [eff] them,'" Stalions said of disgruntled coaches. "That's everywhere."
- It almost seemed scripted that at the end of Mumford's practice, signs were used. There were six square boards containing the logos of the Tampa Bay Lightning ("Lightning"), Oklahoma City Thunder ("Thunder!"), Seattle Storm, Colorado Avalanche and Miami Heat (an ampersand "@" is the other sign). "Whatever you give me I'm going to be the best at it," Stalions said.
Finally, as the sun set on a Mumford practice and the conversation wound down, Stalions -- his intentions at Michigan in question, his career in flux, his one-time boss in the NFL -- was asked one final question: Would Jim Harbaugh take his call right now?
"I don't know," he said.
