Before Connor Stalions resigned his full-time position on Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan football staff earlier this month, Stalions was warned by University representatives that his uncooperative behavior could lead to Stalions’s termination.
With original reporting from The Detroit News, which obtained Stalions’s official University of Michigan personnel file via an Freedom of Information open records request, Stalions was warned by Michigan human resources associate Tiffany Raymond that his obstinate approach had left him set for a hearing that could have resulted in termination.
“This conference is to discuss your failure to cooperate in a University of Michigan and NCAA investigation. Please be advised that termination of employment may result from this conference,” Raymond wrote in the letter sent to Stalions on Michigan’s behalf at the beginning of November.
Via his attorney, Brad Beckworth, Stalions “resigned” his post from Harbaugh’s Michigan program – after years as a volunteer assistant who performed various tasks, Stalions had been hired into a full-time post that paid more than $56,000 in 2022 – Nov. 3, rather than await the formal conclusion of a multi-faceted investigation.
By the time Stalions resigned, the NCAA not only had launched its probe into the alleged cheating, sign-stealing, in-person scouting and spying scheme orchestrated by Stalions but the sport’s governing body also had taken the unprecedented measure of looping in the Big Ten as well as other potentially impacted programs to gird against further illicit activities.
The letter obtained by the paper also revealed that Stalions’s own attorney had misspelled his client’s name in his resignation email.
“As we informed you earlier,” Beckworth wrote in an email that Friday evening, a day prior to Michigan’s primetime, NBC-televised win against Purdue inside Michigan Stadium, “Connor Stallions (sic) decided earlier today to resign from the University of Michigan. Connor has authorized us to send this email on his behalf to formally confirm his earlier decision to resign. Connor believes the recent stories regarding his team [time?] with the University of Michigan have created a distraction for the team he (sic) and hopes that his resignation will help the team and coaching staff focus on tomorrow’s game and the remainder of the season.”
Stalions’s formal exit came after Michigan’s Doug Gnodkte, the athletics department’s top financial office, had told Stalions he had been “relieved of all duties effectively immediately” on Oct. 20, 24 hours after widespread reporting revealed the probe into Harbaugh’s Michigan football program and the scheme allegedly masterminded by Stalions.
Since that time, the Big Ten late last week issued a three-game suspension for Harbaugh, who has teamed with Michigan officials and attorneys to seek a court order that would allow Harbaugh to coach the final two games of the season for the undefeated Wolverines.
Harbaugh was suspended for last Saturday’s Michigan win at Penn State, the fourth game this season that Harbaugh was banned from the sidelines.
Michigan has games left in its regular season against Big Ten foes Maryland and fellow undefeated, College Football Playoff-ranked No. 1 Ohio State.