Michigan can't escape sign-stealing drama with Connor Stalions featured in Netflix episode

It’s game week again in Ann Arbor. This should be a time of excitement when the reigning national champions pivot toward a promising future by officially turning the page on a landmark season that established a new standard of Michigan football.

The Wolverines have a new coach, a different cast of players and a tantalizing menu of games that begins with a nice amuse-bouche, Fresno State, this Saturday in the opener.

In the words of senior right guard Giovanni El-Hadi, it has been “a complete reset.”

“Everything that happened last year,” he said Monday, “doesn’t define us.”

Yet it still trails them, shaping the narrative around these Wolverines as they look to turn the page and start writing a new chapter. The fallout from the most incendiary flashpoints during their title-winning march continues to linger, making it difficult for Michigan to move forward without first reconciling with its controversial past.

A documentary on Connor Stalions, the former Michigan staffer who is alleged to have been at the center of the sign-stealing scandal that became the talk of the sport last fall, debuted Tuesday morning as part of Netflix’s “Untold” series.

Stalions, described as “viral villain” in a promotional campaign, is set to give his side of a salacious story that just won’t die.

Just this past Sunday, the NCAA revived interest in this sordid saga when it delivered Michigan a formal notice of allegations related to its investigation into the scheme.

In the draft version obtained by ESPN earlier this month, the school was reportedly hit with a major Level I charge for a “pattern of noncompliance within the football program.” Meanwhile, Sherrone Moore, who replaced Jim Harbaugh as head coach in January, is one of seven members from the 2023 staff accused of violating NCAA rules. Moore faces a Level II sanction after he allegedly deleted a chain of 52 text messages with Stalions when news broke last October that he was the purported mastermind of an advanced scouting plot to capture future opponents’ play signals.

The correspondence was eventually recovered and provided to the enforcement staff, but Moore could be punished as a potential repeat violator after serving a one-game suspension in September 2023 as part of a negotiated resolution related to a previous NCAA probe into impermissible recruiting activities.

During his encounters with the media, Moore has acted as if he is unbothered by all the drama that has haunted him and his program throughout this summer.

With a constant drumbeat of chatter about the Stalions doc and NCAA case thumping all around him, Moore insisted he has walled himself off from the outside noise.

“You can write about that all you want,” Moore said Monday, “but we’re just worried about playing.”

Moore’s dismissive reaction is unsurprising.

By now, he has become inured to the turbulent wake that has enveloped the Wolverines and sloshed up against the sides of Schembechler Hall. In fact, the signature moment of his career was forged last November in the crucible of controversy, when the sign-stealing mess came to a head and he led the Wolverines to a victory over Penn State the day after Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti issued Harbaugh a three-game ban.

Moore then bawled on national television during a profanity-laced postgame interview that captured the emotional intensity of that frenetic period.

The temperature has since cooled while Moore has become more settled, projecting confidence as the face of Michigan football.

“Kind of stopped getting nervous,” he said.

But he has a big task ahead of him as he tries to steer Michigan through more troubled waters.

With the Wolverines coming off a national title, the tidal wave of expectations has yet to subside. It doesn’t matter that Michigan lost 10 starters on offense, has yet to pick the quarterback to succeed NFL first-round pick J.J. McCarthy or confronts a daunting schedule in the first year of a heftier Big Ten that has 18 teams.

There will be little patience if Moore and the Wolverines stumble early, which is why they can’t afford to have many more distractions.

As El-Hadi said, everyone is after them.

“We have always had a target on our back,” he observed. “But now it’s even bigger than ever. ... We’re everybody’s Super Bowl. We’ve got to treat it that way.”

It was a subtle acknowledgement that a “complete reset,” the one El-Hadi longs for, is impossible. For better and worse, the events of last fall will continue to dictate the conversation about a team that has a rather strange duality: Michigan is both the reigning national champion and the most controversial program in the sport.

Everything that transpired the over the past 10 months has shadowed these Wolverines, framing the perception of them in the eyes of their beholders. The NCAA and Netflix reminded Michigan of that this week.

As much as the Wolverines are ready to take their tale in a new direction, they were confronted with the realization that the epilogue to their 2023 season has only begun to be written. The sign-stealing serial has become their never-ending story, and they are no longer in control of the narrative.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan sign-stealing saga: Connor Stalions featured in Netflix doc