I once heard it said that celebrities who found themselves in the eye of scandal went on Oprah Winfrey's show in the 1990s and 2000s not to be interrogated, but to be forgiven. And so it is with Netflix's "Untold" documentary series, who released its 15th installment on Tuesday with a look at Michigan's in-person scouting scandal during the 2023 college football season.
The documentary cuts at the enigma of Connor Stalions, the ex-military covert operative who also revels in attention. Overnight, Stalions went from a totally anonymous off-field staffer to the most infamous man in college football, at once a tragic figure who sacrificed his own ambition for the glory of his alma mater, and also an outlaw whose illegal practices were allegedly the source of Michigan's late-stage revival under Jim Harbaugh. Within weeks, he was attending Michigan games in person, and by January he not only attended the national championship game in person, but posed for photos with fans and had a documentary crew alongside him in the club level of NRG Stadium.
Untold: Sign Stealer is a sports documentary for non-sports fans, so the film takes its time getting into the scandal breaking last October, and spends just as much time interested in the circus around the story as it does diving into the nitty-gritty of the Stalions operation.
However, Untold does get Stalions on the record, and his answers are unsatisfying.
The film goes inside Stalions's hearing with the NCAA this past April (the NCAA staff was on Zoom from its Indianapolis headquarters, Stalions was at his lawyer's office in Austin). There, Stalions denied obtaining signals through in-person scouting as well as directing individuals to attend games for the purposes of scouting future Michigan opponents. However, he admitted to receiving scouted information from individuals who attended games via tickets he purchased. "To my understanding, there are some people who attended games using tickets I had purchased and recorded parts of those games," Stalions told NCAA investigators, via the documentary. "Sometimes I would receive film from them."
Speaking to Untold cameras, Stalions compared an aunt gifting him a Christmas gift of an item he already owned.
Stalions told the documentary he purchased tickets as a money-making operation and gifted some to friends and family. "I guess the accusation is that my mom helped me advance scout Purdue?" Stalions told the cameras. "I don't know, I don't know... I've profited quite a bit off of buying and selling tickets."
The first part of the documentary unearths a 3-year-old Stalions pretending to play football for Michigan, carrying a love for Wolverines football bequeathed to him from his mother. It delves into his self-professed "manifesto" stretching multiple thousands of pages filled with information for when he one day becomes Michigan's head coach, including a spreadsheet detailing the high school attended by every single NFL draft pick since 2010.
Needless to say, directing his Michigan-mad mother to scout Purdue is one of the most believable things about Stalions' character. "Anything I was tasked with I treated it like my life depended on it," Stalions said of the volunteer position he took with Michigan after graduating from the Naval Academy in 2018.
"I knew how much he liked football because every single conversation and every single thing he planned out throughout the day revolved around football," said Zachary Couzens, a Marine Corps friend who attended multiple games with Stalions and through tickets Stalions purchased. Couzens, by the way, said there was "no evidence" of him filming or photographing opposing coaches at those games.
Speaking of believability, Stalions explanation of accusations he attended the 2023 Michigan State-Central Michigan on CMU's sidelines were not. "I don't recall attending a specific game there, no," Stalions told NCAA investigators in April.
Before Netflix cameras, Stalions held up a photo of the hatted, sunglassed man dressed in Chippewas gear next to his own face and said, "I don't even think this guy looks like me."
There, Untold fails viewers by failing to provide additional context around the MSU-CMU game and Stalions's relationship with other Michigan coaches. CMU fired quarterbacks coach Jake Kostner late last month, as FootballScoop first reported, in a move believed to be in relation to the investigation from the game.
Central Michigan has released a statement in response to the Connor Stalions documentary on Netflix. pic.twitter.com/r47ahGIigB
— Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) August 27, 2024
The documentary also quotes Barstool personality Dave Portnoy saying Stalions admitted to him he attended the CMU game. "I know the answer to that because he told me," Portnoy said, "Yeah, that was Connor on the sidelines."
"Could it be that Connor was at that game? Maybe," Stalions's lawyer Brad Beckworth said. "I haven't seen a picture of Connor at that game."
Left untold by Untold, Michigan fired linebackers coach Chris Partridge in November, saying he "failed to abide by the University directive not to discuss an ongoing NCAA investigation with anyone associated with the Michigan Football Program or others" and new head coach Sherrone Moore was reportedly named in the NCAA's Notice of Allegations to Michigan for allegedly deleting upwards of 50 text messages with Stalions dating back to last October. (The only other figure associated with Michigan to speak with Netflix was former linebacker Michael Barrett.)
Rather than dive into how deep and wide the allegedly misbegotten information spread within Schembechler Hall, Untold largely takes Stalions at his word that he may or may not have attended the CMU-MSU game and that, yes, friends and acquaintances may have sent him video obtained from tickets he purchased, but that information was redundant with the library of signals he built, which was then compared with the TV copy of future opponents' games.
Instead, Untold dives into Stalions' belief that he was hacked by an unnamed third party, most likely paid by Ohio State and possibly by Ryan Day himself.
Ultimately, Untold ends on a happy note for its subject. After an over-the-shoulder shot of Stalions watching Michigan celebrate its national championship from his club seat, the documentary gives the last word to to the ex-Marine who heroically fell on the sword for the glory of the program he devoted his life to supporting.
"I don't always break the rules. In fact, I would argue I don't break the rules. I just walk a very fine line in the gray," Stalions says. "I don't break the rules, I exploit them. I don't regret a thing... I would do the same thing over again."