"The 2023-24 Michigan Wolverines season was a campaign of maximalism. Not only because they went 15-0 and won the National Championship, but because they did so while packing a decade's worth of scandals into one year. If you wanted to learn everything about the sport, in all its contradictions and glory, you couldn't do better than focusing on that very season."
"The off-field (and, well, sort of on-field) highlight of course was the Connor Stalions spying scandal. Stalions was an attaché for the program who worked as a codebreaker, attending games of future Michigan opponents, filming their sidelines, then decoding their hand signals to figure out which plays they were calling. The Stalions affair had a rich texture: Stalions regarded his work for Michigan football as something of a holy crusade, he had a side hustle selling used vacuums, and he even wormed his way onto rival sidelines."
The 2023-24 Michigan Wolverines completed a perfect 15-0 season and won the National Championship amid numerous scandals concentrated in a single year. The Connor Stalions affair involved an attaché acting as a codebreaker who filmed opponents' sidelines and decoded hand signals to identify plays, even infiltrating rival sidelines while maintaining a side hustle selling vacuums and framing his work as a crusade. Coach Jim Harbaugh began the season suspended for recruiting violations. The season prompted debate over whether the program's success stemmed from cheating and positioned the NCAA and systemic collegiate practices as central antagonists.
Read at Defector
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]