Connor Stallion's Michigan Sign Stealing Scandal: Full Documentary Review!

welcome to this episode of the sports detective podcast show my name is James Williams and today we are talking about the Conor stallion's Michigan Wolverine sign stealing documentary on Netflix so in case you guys haven't watched it uh Netflix released a documentary titled sign stealer which basically gives us insight into Connor stallions and to the story of the whole sign stealing Scandal that rocked the world of college football last year year so basically the purpose of this podcast here today is I am going to give a review and kind of a summary of of kind of the key parts that happen in this documentary I'm going to answer a few unanswered questions that we have at the end and then I'm going to kind of give you my overall review of the documentary as a whole because boy this was a uh very interesting documentary so uh before I get into it though I want to remind you guys the Shameless plug please hit that subscribe button if you like uh document reviews Sports documentary reviews specifically that is the best way to help this channel grow and it uh costs you absolutely zerar to subscribe so please do that this is our first documentary review and if we I don't know how many views we're going to get on it but we get decent amount of views a lot of interest in it we'll do more of them so without any further Ado let's get started so basically this documentary starts out and kind of the first third of the documentary is US learning who Connor stallion is because we didn't necessarily know who this person was no one knew about him until this whole crazy story broke in the middle of October last year and we kind of find out a little bit more about Connor stallions we learn that he is a um Michigan Kid born and raised and at a very early age Connor stallions knew what he wanted to do with his life he knew that he wanted to be a football coach and not necessarily just a football coach but he wanted to be a football coach for the University of Michigan there was even a picture when he was like seven years old where I remember when I was seven years old and I love sports I dressed up as like baseball players for Halloween I dressed up as like Derek Jeter one year I think I dressed up as uh Alonso Serano one year and I think I dressed up as A-Rod even one year Connor steinan did not dress up as a Michigan football player for Halloween he dressed up as bo shencker uh the Michigan the longtime Michigan head coach so a little odd but still kind of cute but Conor stallions then as he getting older realizes that he wants to not just be a football coach he wants to be a great football coach and he does some research on hey who are the greatest college football coaches or col or just coaches in general this is his statistic I've never looked through like lists of like the greatest coaches ever ever but he said 15 of the 20 Greatest coaches ever went to Military Academy Schools he references Coach K Greg papovich Bear Bryant Bo Schenck Woody Haye just to name a few Conor stallion says okay I will enter the Naval Academy Conor stallions enters the Naval Academy and his very first day or his first week of being on H Navy's campus he goes to the football offices he goes to Navy's head coach and he says Hey I want to be a student assistant for Navy so the head coach gets up he walks over to the defensive coordinators office and he says coach this is your new uh student assistant and then Conor stallions asks and by the way this is all from Conor stallion's uh framing too which is kind of how a lot of documentaries have come now especially in sports where it's from the person that it's about's perspective which kind of begs you and we'll get into this later begs you to wonder kind of like the journalistic aspirations of a lot of these documentaries which is kind of like a deeper conversation that I don't don't really want to get into today of like should we actually call these things documentary sorry for that tangent but basically Conor stallion ask the defensive coordinator at Navy hey what do you want me to do the defensive coordinator tells him hey we don't have anyone right now trying to decipher other teams you know signs on the other side of the field you can do that so Connor stallions the documentary then pans to his first game being on the sidelines for Navy which of course is against the Ohio State bucke guys and there is a sequence in that game where apparently Conor stallion says to the defensive coordinator after trying to watch Ohio State Signs for the entire game notices that like hey he he goes to defense coordinator like hey power right power right and the def coordinator like what the heck is this 18-year-old uh on the signl saying to me and then it shows the Ohio State play where they do a power right with a quarterback I believe is the the play that they ran and then Navy actually ends up stopping it you kind of this first 30 minutes 35 minutes of the documentary you kind of get into the vibe here that Conor stallions kind of becomes a sign stealing s and there's a few different parts in the documentary where his parents come in and his dad specifically gives like some pretty kind of like Eye openening Quotes about kind of the type of person that Connor is and kind of how his brain is wired and there's uh you know there's one part early where he says like hey Connor has always been a person that where it's like if he focuses on something he can like you know can be like hyperfocused on one specific thing for a very long time and then he also has another quote later where he Compares him to Rainman so I know Rainman is a very outdated reference so Rainman if you don't know him I'm sorry for people I know my age rages vary on my audience here but Rainman is a movie that came out in 1989 Rainman the main character is uh Dustin Hoffman or I guess Rayman isn't the Dustin Hoffman's character but uh I'm sorry for that point it's one of my favorite movies but basically Dustin Hoffman is a uh severely autistic disabled person that uh Tom Cruz is like longdistance brothers with and then B basically kind of figures out that he has this like gift for numbers and you know if you've ever heard like the the phrase of like somebody drops like uh a box of toothpicks on the ground and then you know some people can look at and be like 482 toothpicks that that's Rainman and then later in that movie too they also go to a casino and start counting cards anyway uh that those are kind of descriptors for Connor stallions and then Connor stallions gets into his Manifesto A little bit here where he says that he has a sh uh document in his Manifesto where he literally went through every NFL draft pick since 2010 and went to where they are from and where their hometowns are and basically has them all like listed out on a map in a spreadsheet kind of the idea of that is obviously it's like hey you find out where the biggest pools of talent and what areas of the country have the biggest pools of talent for recruiting wise so you get into that a little bit here and then this is probably the most impressive part where Conor sens eventually works his way onto the Michigan staff he goes to this like this coaching you know seminar or whatever for Michigan coaches introduces himself and then work eventually over time works himself to being a part of Michigan staff basically when he gets on Michigan staff and starts getting connections there they're like okay like like hey I I did all the sign stealing stuff at Navy you know you guys need me to do that here and they're like yeah sure so Connor stallions what he did this is probably the most impressive part of this documentary or kind of interesting part maybe maybe not impressive but also impressing psychotic Conor stallions puts his phone on a tripod puts himself behind like a a a white background a white wall and basically takes pictures of himself and this is his words doing over 2,000 possible signs that that could be shown up on a sideline on a game day so it could be something like this you know it could be something like this and basically it's it's a way that he can uh you know can figure out what the other team is doing and make sense of like of a of a team does like three signs like you know consecutively back to back to back and basically Conor stallions then you know how coaches will have like their play sheets Conor stallions uses that to make his own sign sheet and then uh you know that's kind of how he takes his sign stealing game a level up at Michigan and basically the first third 35 minutes I marked this at 30 minutes of this documentary you're kind of like all right I kind of rooting for Conor Steines a little bit here I I I get I get how like dedicated this guy has dedicated every single moment of his life to becoming a a football coach and becoming a Michigan football coach and then you know at that 35 minute Mark the documentary does two things it starts to make you feel bad for Conor stallions and at the same time it gives you it basically turns to a Michigan prop a full-blown Michigan propaganda piece like every single person that they're interviewing in the documentary I'd say at least 90% of them are Michigan uh grads or or cover Michigan in a certain way and uh basically you start feeling bad for Conor stallions because it's like oh my God he worked his whole life to get to this moment and then right at that 35 minute Mark they get into the investigation and the allegations and then kind of the Fallout for for Michigan basically from uh October 2023 forward and then Conor stallions turns into this guy that like no one basically knew ever and then he starts getting memd to to Hell online and is this guy that was like very non-descript you know kind of person you know couldn't pick him out of a lineup a guy that can show up on the central Michigan sideline and no one notices to one of the most recognizable faces in all of college football and all of sports okay so basically the next part of the documentary gets into the allegations against Michigan and then it gets into the ncaa's investigation a little bit and then it takes a turn where Michigan flips it and says okay how did people get this information so let's get into the basically the allegations of Connor stallions here so basically the allegations are so for people that don't know uh and and this rule the reason that this rule is in place is because um basically they said no in-person scouting in college football so there's two ways that you can s out and you know decipher signs in college football you can do what Connor Sans was was says he was doing on the sidelines and look over during a game at the other sideline and try and figure it out from there you can do that completely legal you can watch game tape and you can try and decipher it that way what you cannot do in college football is you cannot have in-person scouting you cannot have people travel to games and videotape the games trying to decipher people's signs and that is what Connor stallions is alleged of doing there's a lot of records that were discovered of Conor stallions buying several tickets to several college football games all over the country of opponents that Michigan played or maybe was going to play so Connor stallion's argument is this and they alluded to this a little bit early in the documentary con Conor stallion's arguments like hey man I'm just a Michigan football fan and if my friends want to go see games I'll buy him tickets to go see games well then you do a little bit of deeper and another argument with Conor St is like hey man I bought tickets for my mom bro I I've had tickets for my mom at Purdue you think my mom was doing in-person Scouting For Me My Sweet old innocent mother you going to accuse my mom of that bro you accuse her that bro then come to find out that every single ticket that Conor stallion bought for his friends was at the 50 yard line they showed like a a graphic in the documentary where it's like 50 yard line 50 yard line 50 yard line 50 yard line all of them which are pretty expensive tickets and basically to kind of summarize the acquis accusations of that basically to connect the dots on that is a Michigan booster who they called Uncle T uh basically gave the money this is a theory gave the money to Connor stallions then Conor stallions bought the tickets for other people who would go to the games in person and then you know record the games there's another interesting part in this documentary where Connor stallions I'm going to get to the Ohio State part of this year in a second too by the way there is another part of this uh documentary that's very fascinating two more things with Conor stallions one is the central Michigan thing the documenter or the interviewer in the documentary hands Conor sence a picture of what we all know as him on the Michigan sideline hands it to Connor stallions and they ask him is that you and Connor stallions this is the thing that's kind of the most funny in the documentaries he's a terrible liar Conor stallions gets the picture and he's like oh my God this picture man this picture that's been getting sent around online I that dude doesn't even look like me doesn't even look like me bro I don't even know why people are making that comparison bro me me on the central Michigan sideline bro me never even been to Central Michigan I'm obviously embellishing that a little bit there but he's basically no it's not even me I don't even like the guy doesn't even look like me and it's like come on man come on I bet your parents saw those pictures and were're like yeah what's gotter doing in central Michigan what's he doing oh gosh and then um so that was funny and then they show us and this is things that uh from from things that I've read basically Conor stallion's lawyers okay this being in the documentary where the NCAA did question him about all this stuff in April and basically they asked him like a question of like did you pay for other people to go to games other college football games and Conor San says yes I did and then they say did you tell people to when you paid for their their tickets to go to these games to record signs of the other team or record film and he's like no I did not and then they ask him and this is where Conor Sans gets put into a corner did they ever send you film did those people ever send you film that that you paid to have go to these games and Conor Sall is like I I mean I I may have received some film I might have received some film and Connor stallion's argument is like hey I like college football I pay for my friends to go to college football games and basically his argument his biggest argument is like I'm such a like Savon at sign stealing they can send me that film I don't need it that's how good I am at this he's like I run this like it's hard to walk right so that's Connor s's defense there but basically he's like yeah they if you read between the lines it's like yeah they they definitely sent me some film but Conor s is like hey I didn't need it so with that being said let's get to the Ohio State part of this because maybe the last quarter third of this part of the documentary turns into and this is where we get into kind of the defense of Michigan and this is what I talk about with Michigan propaganda when I say that I don't even necessarily mean it in a bad way where and this is basically Michigan's two defenses of the sign stealing investigation against them the first one is basically yeah you kind of caught us we definitely did some shady stuff here but how did this information get leaked how did the Washington Post get this information and break this story because basically Michigan's probably like and they're they're not they're saying this without saying this but they're like hey man we we kept this a pretty tight quiet operation how did this information get leaked and basically and you guys uh if you're probably watching this far and do this video you probably already know this but basically it's like hey Ryan day with his connections with his brother that has like a private investigating firm and then there's another connection that I I I was trying to uh remember before I started recording but please fill me in in the comments because I can't remember Ryan day had some sort of connection or Ryan day's brother or some somebody with Ohio state had connections to The Washington Post that have originally broke the story I can't remember that please fill me in in the comments because I can't remember that connection basically they Michigan flips on it's like hey you know what we did or what you were accusing us of doing accusing us of doing we didn't break the law or anything maybe broke some NCAA laws but we didn't break the law or anything so you're going to do spend all this time and energy focusing on this investigation where we may have done something wrong may not have done something wrong but definitely didn't break the law who actually did break the law was the person that uncovered this information the person that hacked into Connor stallion's computer because if they hacked into Conor stallion's computer and all of his devices they probably hacked into every single Michigan person's devices you'd like to think that right so that's kind of their thing is like hey you know they're flipping it on them it's like hey you're going to accuse us of all this stuff well how this information got leaked had to be from something that was done illegally which in the Court of you know the law of the United States is you know actually breaking the law compared to at least what's Michigan's accusing compared to you know paying people to go in person and record games right so that's Michigan's First Defense uh their second defense is basically and we'll get into this a little bit more with unanswered questions there's another part in the documentary early where Conor stallion says that basically there's kind of this like underground group of like you know analysts and coaches in college football that like every Sunday they like meet and they like share playbooks they share signs that they they learn from other teams and it's kind of like this thing where it's like hey I scratch your back you scratch my back it's basically one of those things and Michigan also kind of their other argument is like hey you know if if we' had the same kind of like investigating that that was done on Conor stallions what if we flip that we're not going to do it because it's obviously illegal and they really can't do it because like again paying people to do inperson scouting by the rule of the law of the United States not illegal by rule of NCAA law illegal so you would have to like break into people's computers if you were going to investigate a bunch of their teams and they're kind of like hey if you want to play this game and if we all did a bunch of different investigating here we could probably find some stuff on some of these other schools and that part there I 100% side with Michigan on you're telling me that that Michigan was the only team that was you know going ahead and doing this you telling me that seriously you really think Michigan's the only team do you think Santa Claus is real too you're telling me with the SEC schools that have had head coaches pay or not there's not I don't know if there's a connection with paying for prostitutes but look up Hugh Free's prostitutes I'll just say that where he called prostitutes like dozens of times and and Hugh fre is like I just called the wrong number bro and it's like you called the wrong number like 50 times you're telling me that that basically how this worked was a booster was paying for people to go to games iners scouting when we have all this money flowing through nil the SEC schools none of them have done this come on son and that's where I 100% agree with Michigan is that yeah this probably was a thing that was going on all over the country now maybe Michigan did it to a higher degree than everyone else maybe they did it a little bit more sloppily where they got caught and Conor stallions didn't have his venmo on private that was another big part of the documentary that that is where I 100% uh agree with Michigan on this stuffs uh let's get into the unanswered questions there's a few unanswered questions that we have here from this documentary and I'm there's a lot but I'm only going to address a few that I have written down because I'm already going way too long on this the first one is Michigan get in trouble will anybody that was potentially a part of this get in trouble from my understanding of this now the NCA ultimately can kind of do whatever they want but from my understanding of this Michigan only gets severely punished if the NCAA can find out that either Chiron Moore or Jim Harbaugh basically funded this or orchestrated this or even if they knew about this they knew about a lot of the details of this and okayed this or even if it was their idea from what I can tell there is no evidence of that that doesn't mean Ohio State fans that doesn't mean that they didn't know it it just means that there is no evidence of it again it's a thing that has to be proven so that that's kind of what I've heard basically I could be wrong but it's basically if if they can't can't prove that Conor stallions wasn't just like a you know a rogue agent doing this with a booster or a board member or whatever uh if they can't prove that if that's the only thing they can prove Michigan is kind of scot-free in this you know thing well maybe not Scot free they might give him like you know recruiting stuff they might give them you know maybe in a year they're bad they give them a postseason ban or something like that or maybe Michigan's like if they it could be funny they're like they don't make the playoff this year like we will impose a postseason ban or something like that that's kind of a thing that happens sometimes where schools like aren't eligible for a bowl game and they're like we are imposing a postseason ban and it's like okay you weren't going to make it this year it's kind of silly so that's the first unanswered question two the person that definitely was involved with this the person that definitely will get punished for this more than anybody Connor stallions Connor stallions probably ain't coaching in college football again as long as the NCAA is in charge I think I mentioned this earlier that I was like you're watching the first 20 25 minutes this you're like can I hire stallions for my team like this dude is insane this dude is insane with all the things that he is doing to try win football games and how he just wants to win football games and he's doing everything possible to do it now again he did it a little bit too far where he was breaking rules but that dude ain't never Co coaching in h college football but I think that's pretty clear because he's not necessarily being the most Cooperative with the NCAA and you know we know we know bro we know he did it let's see what's the other unanswerable questions that I have why didn't Conor stallions rat out the other sign Steelers and the other kind of shady people that are a part of these other programs my best understanding of that is kind of where we're getting to this a little bit earlier the only way to prove the or find the evidence that these guys were at one point doing this is basically to kind of hack their computers and stuff like that and there's really or to search all their computers and there's really no reason to do that unless you have cause or if they're breaking the law right and if Conor stallion did come out let's say he comes out tomorrow and he's like here is seven other sign Steelers from Ohio State Penn State Georgia Texas Florida wherever all these people were doing the same exact thing I was doing one he would kind of admit guilt on his own that like hey I was doing it and two he could probably get his ass suit off that would basically be the biggest part of this he would just get sued to all holy hell and he'd have a mountain of lawsuits in front of him because he'd basically be doing def defamation at that point and again no no laws are broken so trying to access the information that these people would have you would have to like you know have like a police warrant or something like that and the NCAA would have to have like a reason or the NCAA would have to have a reason to go investigate these people's computers so I I think that kind of hopefully that makes sense overall because we're entering about 25 minutes in this video overall I again first documentary review ever three out of five stars I was entertained the entire time I was entertained the entire time I'm I'm docking at points because it wasn't necessarily A journalistic you know Pursuit and uh like we said it was definitely Michigan propaganda for a good chunk of this but I uh I kind of found the thing where it's like you f you found a way as a a neutral Observer to actually find Conor stallions a little bit likable I understand if you're like a big 10 fan or an Ohio State fan you're probably watching this and you're like I want to eat glass rather than watching this but but overall I found it in a aing I was I had multiple times where I like you know laughed out loud to just kind of some of the ridiculous ridiculousness of it and I think they did a good job of you know reforming you know Conor stallion's image a little bit so um yeah three out of five stars I I enjoyed it if you're watching this video and you haven't watched it go ahead and watch it I think it's a really good watch so uh again I understand if you're a big 10 fan you think differently of me you see the Iowa State thing behind me if in Iowa if there basically if this was flipp on Iowa and Iowa was being it was a documentary about Iowa and Iowa won the National Championship under these circumstances I would probably be uh I I probably would have just broken my computer instead of recording this actual video so thank God I didn't and uh thank God we recorded this video and thank God you got this far in the podcast I again I have no idea how the views are going to be for this one I don't know I'm GNA get like 12 views on this or I don't know I'm going to get you know over 100 or something like that so if you enjoyed this video please help me out hit that subscribe button hit that like button if you haven't done already doing both of those things especially the Subscribe helps us out tremendously in the algorithm it is the best way to help small channels like this grow on YouTube it helps us defeat the algorithm that is our goal here we have a lot of uh videos that have uh way more views than we have subscribers so we want to start changing that so thank you very much for watching this episode of sports de podcast feel free to check out other videos that we have on our Channel and leave a comment on what you thought about the documentary or what you thought about you know some maybe some things that I missed here so thank you very much for watching I'll talk to you next time