It doesn’t take long for Dave Portnoy, Michigan Wolverines alum and head of media conglomerate Barstool Sports, to make an appearance in Netflix’s recently released documentary “Untold: Sign Stealer,” which truly indicates just how wild and culturally popular the story of Connor Stalions was.
The show is billed as the first time that Stalions, the college football world’s favorite meme target, tells his side of the story that exploded onto message boards and corners of the internet beyond the typical scope of CFB’s influence. Here are three takeaways from Untold: Sign-Stealer, the Stalions documentary.
Connor Stalions Documentary Reveals Secrets Behind Michigan Sign-Stealing Scandal
1) Connor Speaks!
Until this point in the saga, we hadn’t heard much from Stalions directly outside of a few press releases. We didn’t entirely know what he looked like, as most of the pictures shown during the investigation were snapshots of an incognito Stalions wearing a hat or sunglasses.
For the majority of the documentary, we get a straight-on view of Stalions discussing his journey and his history in his own words, which is somewhat refreshing at the start.
Stalions is mild-mannered and well-spoken in his demeanor. His face rarely shows any emotion, except for a few brief moments, such as his response to the question “How often are you wrong?” with an emphatic “I’m rarely wrong” and a subtle chuckle afterward, or when the director hands him a picture of the infamous Central Michigan sideline figure.
While Stalions is clearly well-coached in how to speak in front of the camera, his guard clearly comes down in the candid moments when he shows the camera some of his keepsakes and tells a story about an interaction with Coach Jim Harbaugh.
He retells a story about meeting Mike Barrett, who is also in the documentary, near the field after Stalions attends the win over Ohio State following his suspension, and his joy in the interaction and his care for Barrett seem incredibly sincere.
His joy and passion for not only the Michigan program but for the game of football finally seem authentic and not just some generated plotline to help invest the viewer in an hour-and-a-half-long documentary that seems to paint Stalions as a victim. Speaking of the victim…
2) The Real Culprit…
It took us almost 20 minutes to get there, but we finally found the real culprit, the seedy underbelly of analysts and sign stealers that college football hides from the world!
The breaking news is that this secretive organization congregates every Sunday after games via phone call to trade information, whether it be regarding schemes, game plans, signs, or whatever the topic du jour might be.
The authoritative voice of columnist Dan Wetzel backs up the claim that the network exists, saying, “Every team has a guy who’s in charge of sign stealing, and it is a subculture of college football.”
Importantly, Wetzel reminds the audience that “you’re allowed to steal signs,” whether it be through watching a TV broadcast or coach tape to try and decipher the signals.
Except…that’s not the end of the villainy. Enter Brad Beckworth, Stalions’ attorney, who makes it clear as he recounts some of his impressive victories that he has the utmost disdain for the NCAA, calling it a “corrupt organization, it’s a hypocrite” and stating that anytime he has an opportunity to take a case against the NCAA, he will.
Beckworth mentions that he spent a year fighting on behalf of Johnny Manziel.
We get a media montage of Michigan’s success post-Stalions. Portnoy wears a shirt with the Manifesto on it in maize and blue. A shadowy figure from an Ohio State message board who goes by “Brohio” speaks anonymously on the Ohio State component. A conspiracy theory is floated over how the materials from the case landed on the NCAA’s desk.
The multiple redirects as to who might be at fault certainly play into today’s culture of conspiracy theories, and they do make clear that there are multiple factors at play beyond just Stalions’ role as the head of Michigan’s sign-stealing operation.
Additionally, while it’s fun to speculate about how the information got out and who might have been behind it, there’s a feeling that somehow solving those elements of the story is more important to proving Stalions’ innocence than the potential larger issues at hand.
3) Stalions Was a Dedicated Michigan Man Through and Through, With an Emphasis on Dedication
The level of detail and effort that Stalions put into becoming a coach was monstrous. The word discipline comes up often during the documentary, and Stalions stuck to that mantra of discipline throughout his drive and desire to become a coach at Michigan.
Without revealing too much, he breaks down the famed “manifesto” and touches lightly on what it includes and how it would help him if he were to get back into coaching.
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Stalions was raised as a Michigan fan, and if one of the missions of the documentary is to demonstrate that his goal was always to be a coach one day at Michigan and that he has remained loyal to the school, that’s clearly accomplished.
So is the discipline, intelligence, and dedication of Stalions as a human being. The few shots of the famed manifesto clearly showcase his attention to detail and the depths to which he was willing to go to break into the industry. The word obsessive comes to mind consistently throughout.
Stalions clearly has goals of being a coach again, that much is easy to conclude from the documentary. It’s also easy to surmise that the production was as much about helping to rebrand him as a heroic figure of sorts, one willing to go to the very edge of whatever is necessary to accomplish his goals.
While the show helps humanize Stalions, and ultimately does provide a decent summary of one of the most memorable scandals to hit college football in decades, it can be hard to really care too much about any of it.
With the introduction of in-helmet communication and signs effectively becoming a thing of the past, a question arises regarding Stalions that perhaps should have been asked all along: Can he actually coach?
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