Vacuums, Fraud, Manifestos, Arch Rivals, and Random Sidelines
Vacuums, Fraud, Manifestos, Arch Rivals, and Random Sidelines
The latest in the Michigan investigation/soap opera
“Vacuums aren’t my thing,” said Michigan tailback Blake Corum to reporters on November 7. “I don’t know anything about that.”
If you’re asking why Michigan’s star running back is commenting to reporters about vacuums, I applaud your ability to peel yourself away from the internet. If you know exactly why Corum is talking about vacuums, then welcome to the club of college football degenerates.
It’s been a while since we’ve discussed Michigan’s sign stealing operation and investigation, so if you need a refresher, take a look at the newsletter I published on October 25 when the news first broke below.
I didn’t think that this story could get wilder, and then it did. Let’s take a break together and recap what broke in one of college football’s wildest off-the-field weeks. We’ll close with what this all means for Michigan, the Playoff, and the Big 10, so stay tuned for a wild ride.
The Michigan Manifesto
Perhaps the first clue that this story was more of the Pole Assassin variety than the earlier Hamburgergate was the reporting done by fellow Substacker
of on October 25 for Sports Illustrated. Johnson gained access to a series of text messages between advanced scouting aficionado Connor Stalions and a Power Five student looking to break into coaching.In the many text conversations between the two, Stalions laid out how he took opponents’ signs from TV broadcast copies (which is legal, as we discussed in the first article about Michigan and Stalions). Stalions also laid out how he would stand next to then-offensive coordinator Josh Gattis and would relay the opposition’s plays to the Wolverines’ playcaller.
Buried in this text thread, though, was the revelation that captured the internet’s attention. In their conversations, Stalions divulged the fact that he maintained daily a 550-600 page Google Doc that he dubbed the “Michigan Manifesto.” According to Stalions, “Any idea you could ever have…there’s a place where it belongs in the document. It’s super organized.”
Stalions also said that he was working with a group of “a dozen or two” to maintain the Manifesto and actively plan for how to run the Michigan football program over a decade down the line.
I don’t have to be the one to tell you that behavior like that is certainly a red flag. It shows that Stalions is obsessed with the Maize and Blue. Whether that’s to a detriment to him is up to you to decide, but he’s certainly put the program in a tough spot.
Oh, and also included in Johnson’s report is the fact that Stalions, while on staff at Navy, apparently obtained over a decade’s worth of standardized test results and high school documents on Navy football players. You don’t need me to tell you how illegal and sketchy that is.
Stalions and the Chippewas
Who doesn’t love some MACtion? Connor Stalions certainly does!
As college football-crazed internet sleuths are prone to do, more information than most people knew what to do with came out about Stalions. Some true, some false, but information was aplenty.
On October 30, news broke that Central Michigan University, a school Stalions claimed he had contacts at, were investigating a mysterious figure on their sidelines for their Sept. 1 game against Michigan State. A mysterious figure that bears a striking resemblance to Connor Stalions.
Almost immediately, Central Michigan Athletic Director Amy Folan announced the school was looking into who the unidentified scouting person was on the sidelines for the Chippewas matchup against none other than Michigan State.
What’s more concerning is the fact that nobody from Central Michigan has come out and said, “Hey, that’s one of our staffers!” Do they legitimately not know who this guy, in full university-issued coaching gear, is? How did he get on the sidelines?
Chippewa Head Coach Jim McElwain—who did work at Michigan while Stalions was there—said that Stalions was not on any distributed pass list.
“We obviously are aware of a picture floating around with the sign-stealer guy…Our people are doing everything they can to get to the bottom of it. We were totally unaware of it.” - CMU Head Coach Jim McElwain on whether or not Connor Stalions was on Central Michigan’s sideline.
It’s important to note that Michigan did not have a game that day, so Stalions was hypothetically able to make the just over one hour drive from Ann Arbor to East Lansing to sit in on one of their rival’s games. The Wolverines played the next day, Sept. 2, against East Carolina.
Now, another break is coming in the story, albeit one not heavily reported. It appears, if you’re to believe Ohio State sleuths, that Stalions also appeared on the Western Michigan sideline for their 2022 opener against Michigan State. Again, this is a very fringe story, and no confirmation has come from Western Michigan, Michigan, the Big 10, or the NCAA on who this individual is.
It was the Buckeyes!
In any great rivalry, everything that happens to your team is because of your rival. Everything.
So, it makes sense that when an erroneous rumor that Ohio State hired private investigators, potentially Ryan Day’s brother, to investigate Michigan and turned over the sign stealing evidence to the NCAA, Michigan fans jumped on it. But that story was completely fabricated.
That doesn’t exonerate the Buckeyes, though. Just a few days ago, Michigan sent a document to the NCAA investigators claiming that three Big 10 schools stole and shared the Wolverines’ signs. Those three schools? Rutgers, Purdue, and to nobody’s surprise, Ohio State.
It’s important to note that nowhere in Michigan’s claim do they also accuse the other three schools of what’s now being called “advanced scouting.” Instead, they only claim that one of the three busted the Wolverines’ code and shared the secrets with the other two. As we discussed in the first newsletter about this scandal, that’s not illegal. It’s a moral grey area, sure, but legal. Technically.
In an interview with The Athletic, the person who gave the document to Michigan claimed that it took him “10-12 hours per week” to decode the signs “off of TV copy and other film.”
It appears we’ve moved onto the blaming stage of this game.
Whether or not the other schools participated in this advanced scouting is unclear, but it does not make Michigan’s crimes any worse.
But this section of the story would get buried by perhaps the wildest turn to a story I remember this side of Hugh Freeze at Ole Miss.
The Dirty Vacuums
On Tuesday, November 7, documents showing an LLC agreement between Connor Stalions and star Michigan tailback Blake Corum in Wyoming surfaced. Further digging into the documents by ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg showed that the business, BC2 Housing LLC, had an address in Ann Arbor as its primary mailing address. That address belonged to a house owned by Stalions.
The LLC was formed in March 2022 with only one signature: Stalions. According to the Wyoming documents, the LLC is in good financial and tax standing, and appears to be an operating business. Once we factor in the HOA lawsuits about running a vacuum cleaner business at his house, which Stalions lost and was forced to comply to his HOA bylaws and pay a $6,000 fine, we get the hilariously important quote from Corum.
“I’m a clean person, but I’m not a cleaner. Vacuums aren’t my thing. I don’t know anything about that.”
I don’t have to tell you that this is getting very serious. We’re treading into fraud territory for Stalions, who may have used Corum’s name to jumpstart is vacuum resale business. Corum also has his family’s lawyers digging into how Stalions made this LLC without Corum’s knowledge and potential legal remedies.
What does this mess mean?
You mean besides entertainment? Most of it, not too much.
The investigations into Stalions on other sidelines will be the biggest part of this, but again, it’s an NCAA investigation. I wouldn’t expect to hear anything for at least a year. The same goes for whatever happened in Stalions’ vacuum business and how Corum and his lawyers decided to proceed.
That leaves us where we started this mess: at a Big 10 investigation. They’re justifiably taking their time, as they should, but pressure is mounting. Commissioner Tony Pettiti was in Ann Arbor speaking to Michigan President Santa Ono on Friday, Nov. 3. There, he gave Michigan a notice of disciplinary action. On Wednesday, Nov. 7, Michigan sent a 10-page response to the conference office on their side of the story.
We can assume that means the conference has a punishment in mind, but it might not be as simple as that. A potentially massive legal battle, which we’ll discuss in a later newsletter, is looming. Is that enough to sway Pettiti off of punishing the Wolverines? And what does he do about the Rutgers-Purdue-Ohio State triumvirate?
Based on what we’ve already seen, this story will have more twists and turns to come. Tune in next week to Wolverine Drama and find out what Pettiti does!