His resignation marked the latest jarring turn in Stalions’s brash attempt to crash into college football at the highest level. He grew up in a small town just north of Detroit and was quickly indoctrinated into Michigan fandom by his alumni parents. In a January 2022 interview for the blog of Soldiers to Sidelines, a nonprofit organization for veterans, he said that researched how to break into the coaching industry in high school.
He said that he decided there were two paths to his goal: play football at a high level and stick around as a graduate assistant; or hone leadership skills in a military setting, as Duke former basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, a West Point graduate and former Army officer, had done. Stalions set his focus on attending the U.S. Naval Academy and successfully gained admission in 2013. One of the first things he did was offer his services to the football team, then coached by Ken Niumatalolo, as a student assistant. It was an unpaid role he held for five seasons, according to Scott Strasemeier, spokesman for the Navy football team. According to a person involved with Navy football during this period, Stalions worked with the video and recruiting departments, primarily handling administrative tasks for director of player personnel Sean Magee. He also talked constantly of the Wolverines. “He only cared about one school and that was Michigan,” said the person. “He was an obsessive fan.”
It was at Navy that Stalions seemingly started decoding opponents’ play-signals. According to a person who later worked with him at Michigan, Stalions “bragged and was proud of the fact that he could discern what was taking place from the offense in a relatively short period of time.” Stalions offered his skills to the Navy coaches, but he was brushed aside, said the person familiar with the team. A few months before graduating in May 2017, things took a fortuitous turn for Stalions’s ambitions when Michigan hired Magee to be their new director of player personnel in February. At the time of his hiring, Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh praised Magee’s “military experience, leadership skills and organizational talents.”Stalions wouldn’t be able to capitalize on this connection for several more years, however, due to his obligation to the U.S. Marine Corps. His official military personnel file provided by the Marines shows that he attended basic training in Quantico, Va., from March to September of 2018, then trained at Logistics Operations School at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune from October 2018 until January 2019. He eventually was stationed at Camp Pendleton in southern California.
He attended a handful of Michigan games as a fan while he was training, but appeared to take on a more visible presence during the 2019 season, even while he was serving in the Marines. Photos posted by Stalions’s relatives on Instagram and Facebook show him on the sidelines in team apparel at three games: a road game at Wisconsin, homecoming against Iowa and the 2020 Citrus Bowl.
It is not known if Stalions attended games during the pandemic-modified 2020 season, but his role seemingly expanded again in 2021. Photos and videos place Stalions on the sidelines, often in prominent places, for at least five games. He stood behind Harbaugh at the end of a close road win over Nebraska and during the Big Ten championship game. After Michigan defeated Wisconsin, he celebrated with players in the visitor’s locker room. It’s unclear what Stalions was doing for the program during this period. Stalions said in the blog post that he was an offensive analyst at Michigan during the 2021 season. A spokesman for Michigan said that “Connor was hired in May 2022 as a recruiting analyst, anything prior to that was done as a volunteer.”
Property records indicate that he purchased a $485,000 house near the Michigan campus in Ann Arbor in March 2022, shortly before his stint with the Marines ended. Not long after he moved in that spring, dozens of old vacuum cleaners appeared on his front porch. The unsightly stash peeved neighbors and sparked the interest of the homeowners association, which sued Stalions for allegedly operating an appliance refurbishing business out of his home in violation of its bylaws.
Stalions fought back and represented himself in Washtenaw County Trial Court. In a letter written in response to a summons in October 2022, he wrote:
“I suspect that whoever has chosen to sue me either 1. doesn’t like the fact that I am a veteran; or 2. is a Michigan State fan and knows I am a Michigan football coach and wants to draw my attention away.” He had one Spartans fan in mind—“someone named Jeff” who lived down the street and had a son attending Michigan State. “He uncomfortably questioned me about Michigan football and what goes on in our building, giving me a bad feeling about him. He definitely seemed like someone who wants to distract me with unnecessary time-consuming things like this,” Stalions wrote.
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