AP: Stalions Filed No Expense Reports w/Michigan
AP’s Larry Lage did a FOIA request to find any expense reports filed by Connor Stalions, and was told no such reports exist, further demonstrating that no other Michigan staffers or coaches were involved in his scheme:
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Connor Stalions, the former Michigan staffer at the center of sign-stealing investigation by the NCAA, did not file any expense reports during the 17 months he was formally employed by the football program, according to the school.
The Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Stalions’ expense reports while he was employed from May 2022 through Nov. 3, 2023. There are no responsive records, Patricia Sellinger, chief freedom of information officer at the school, replied in an email sent Wednesday.
November 15th, 2023 at 3:59 PM ^
This seems pretty significant. If the coaches did know, and approve, there would absolutely have been expense reports. No such thing as "petty cash" in an organization that size. Hell, I can't even expense a $25 lunch without a detailed receipt (and I'm damn sure not paying for it myself).
Free Jim Harbaugh!
November 15th, 2023 at 3:59 PM ^
I'm sure this will give BuckNut69420 and Spartan300BeatThoseNerds a reason to question their priors and take a more objective view of these proceedings.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:16 PM ^
The last thing they have to hang onto now is the 'How did he afford this???' so Im looking forward to it being leaked that either Connors parents were helping or he had multiple sources of income beyond the 55k everyones quoting. We know he had other income sources, Im just anxiously awaiting the Feldman tweet being like 'Connor Stallions reported 120k in income in 2022' or something like that
November 15th, 2023 at 4:20 PM ^
The 55k salary is such a vapid non-argument.
WE ALL know at least one person who makes less than 55k/year who spends more than 15k on their obsessions.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:04 PM ^
Also, $15k over 18 months (the amount of time he's at UM) works out to about $830/mo. Assuming he doesn't have to pay rent (he apparently owned a place that he subletted out but maybe he stayed in one of the rooms), that's pretty doable on $55k/yr. And that's not even assuming he had any savings from his time in the military or elsewhere.
That was the part that never struck me as weird; you add a zero to that total then I get worried but a lot of people worrying about the cost are either (a) financially illiterate or (b) strongly in the "how much could one banana cost? $10?" crowd
November 15th, 2023 at 5:11 PM ^
Don't forget that chickens are no longer nervous birds!
November 15th, 2023 at 8:57 PM ^
The lion does not concern himself with the delusions of the sheep.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:00 PM ^
Unfortunately buckeye fans have already accused Larry Lage of being a Michigan slappy because he lives in AA. Even when they are corrected and told Lage is an msu grad and was actually the sparty mascot they don't believe it...It's terminal, you can't fix osu stupid.
November 15th, 2023 at 6:20 PM ^
Cleveland.com also filed a foia and got the same response.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:01 PM ^
bsaically, everything Sopwith says seems true. After that first 3 days of leaks, basically everything Michigan has said has been on point and everything 11W, Pete Thamel, Stew Mandel and Ari Wasserman have been bloviating about has been opinion, conjecture and speculation that has mostly NOT been true. And Tony Pettitti believed them over Michigan.
Cool.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:33 PM ^
Thanks for remembering ;)
But yeah. I said on (checking...) Oct 27 3:16am EDT
1. "Follow the Money" won't lead anywhere. The money indeed came from Stalions' personal funds. Stop biting your fingernails off.
2. No coaches/staff knew anything other than he appeared to be a Ray Babbitt-level savant at deciphering signals from the normal raw materials. This isn't escalating.
The only thing that truly surprises me at this point is that the one-page cheat-sheet hasn't come out, because like everything else connected with this story it's 100% guaranteed to break the interwebs when it does.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:22 PM ^
When this is all over, will you tell us how you stumbled into this mess?
November 15th, 2023 at 5:33 PM ^
100% will.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:23 PM ^
On the last piece, is that one page cheat sheet getting out in public good or bad for Michigan?
November 15th, 2023 at 5:35 PM ^
Bad in the sense it just puts it atop the news cycle for another couple days, but substantively doesn't really change anything. It's just that the interwebs are going to lose their minds per usual and the optics obviously aren't great. If it weren't for that, I'd have posted it myself. If it were any other team but us it would be hilarious.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:51 PM ^
Jesus. This shit never ends. And I’m sure with whatever’s to come out, it might be “neutral” in terms of substance but the loud asses in the media and the conference will try to fck Harbaugh and Michigan up even more for it. So that’s just great
November 15th, 2023 at 5:31 PM ^
Sopwith, please respond. Is that one thing bad/going to hurt Michigan?
November 15th, 2023 at 5:37 PM ^
See above. Optically bad. Substantively neutral.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:33 PM ^
does that 1-page cheat sheet look basically like the spreadsheet the sign stealing 3 made?
November 15th, 2023 at 5:45 PM ^
No, it's more a "Sign Stealing for Dummies" kinda thing for a layperson. To be honest if I had gone into the stands and done this myself sans instructions, I would have done it wrong.
What's important is that the headers were in a proper block Michigan font.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:58 PM ^
welp, that will be a fun/annoying news day. Guessing they'll drop it on Friday morning
November 15th, 2023 at 6:33 PM ^
It's been weeks. If someone in the media had it, it would have dropped a long time ago on the first slow click day. I can say for sure the people who have it aren't Michigan fans and wouldn't be motivated to protect UM, so why haven't they passed it along?
I have a theory: not only are they not Michigan fans, they're not even necessarily football or sports fans, or maybe casual at best (with the exception of that one ex-coach dude who came forward). They didn't cross paths with CS because of sports, so they just kinda exist in a parallel universe completely unaware this whole thing is even a story because they don't have sports news in their social media feeds. Seriously.
And this doc has been sitting in their email for months/years and they've never given it another thought.
November 15th, 2023 at 7:27 PM ^
I mean can’t they just pass it off as a “cheat sheet for legally deciphering signs during a game” I mean that could be possible, right??
November 15th, 2023 at 7:39 PM ^
Man, the only thing I can come up with is that Stalions was 100% convinced that he had found an air-tight, bomb-proof, worry-free loophole in the scouting bylaws. Otherwise, his combination of hubris, idiocy, and sloppiness is almost comical (in a black humor sort of way).
November 15th, 2023 at 10:33 PM ^
I'm 100% convinced of this. He thought he had found a legal way to game the system. That's why he didn't try to hide anything.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:04 PM ^
Would have been hard to get that expense report approval through accounting. What kind of receipt would he attach? Not surprised he didn't even attempt it. You can push so much through miscellaneous meals under $25.
November 15th, 2023 at 6:21 PM ^
I believe in my analyst days we called that "cab-itrage". Back when there were actual taxi cabs and none of them ever had receipt paper in the meter.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:06 PM ^
Naturally. Are we sure that the "PI firm" wasn't TMZ?
November 15th, 2023 at 4:10 PM ^
Haha!! Everyone called the Sparty response to this!
November 15th, 2023 at 4:14 PM ^
It would be funny if it wasn't so predictable.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:30 PM ^
Why subject yourself to that nonsense? I mean now with Michigan's basketball team climbing 50 spots in a weeks time to pass MSU on KenPom they have to be completely unstable.
It's not fair that Michigan is always better just reality of being lil bro.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:14 PM ^
Would the BIG10 remove the remaining two game suspension on Harbaugh now?
November 15th, 2023 at 4:22 PM ^
Oh, you sweet, summer child.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:33 PM ^
The B1G is suspending Harbaugh under "sportsmanship" considerations by the program. In their eyes an "unusual" and "vast" scheme was perpetrated to get signals for Michigan which aided their chances to win games - which they can claim is "poor sportsmanship" even if it was technically within the rules (still to be proven).
FWIW --- The most recent conspiracy brewing on twitter (from both unhinged OSU/MSU fans and others just looking for "clicks") is that M coaches and players are being interviewed individually by the NCAA (and FBI?) because the sign stealing has been tied to illegal gambling akin to fixing games. (also an attempt to tie the Weiss situation back into this one.)
-- This is a load of Sh1t of course..... not even Thamel or his ilk are touching it.
I do find it amusing that a number of M affiliated accounts have now begun randomly tweeting out various "unconfirmed allegations" concerning Ryan Day and/or OSU in a similar format to those trying to smear M........Best bet is to stay off twitter completely or just the M accounts you follow.
November 15th, 2023 at 8:26 PM ^
I never posted on Twitter before all this. Now I quite enjoy blocking all the people who say incredibly stupid things about the situation. When I bother to check, besides the garbage journalists, they're all Spartys and Nuts.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:18 PM ^
This is a good development. Other issues to resolve: where was the database and who had access to it? I suspect it was a Google Docs and that it was distributed far and wide within his "network" and not at all within his workplace or the athletic department. And who paid for it? I suspect he did because he literally bled maize and blue. Other than that, I assume his colleagues thought he spent days watching film and the network broadcasts to become a sign-reading savant. And nobody looked to carefully at how, as everyone assumed that pretty much anything can be gleaned from a careful review of every tape and social media post about an event attended by tens of thousands of people. They were correct about his commitment but severely underestimated what *that* level of commitment could do if channeled in the wrong direction.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:19 PM ^
Funny this just came out. It should have been the first step from any of these “investigative” reporters. Especially disappointed by the WAPO in this, since they’re an actual news organization.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:40 PM ^
WAPO is Bezos' side hobby national enquirer tabloid now. The days of it being a news source are long gone.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:24 PM ^
Obviously, Michigan's chief freedom of information officer is involved in this massive conspiracy and coverup. The NCAA needs to send a forensic team out immediately to probe the garbage that Jim Harbaugh is feeding his chickens. If necessary, the chickens will have to be impounded so that their poop can be collected and the shredded bits of expense reports can be extracted and re-assembled.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:42 PM ^
The FBI just left Patricia Sellinger office with a bunch of boxes and bins full of equipment and documents lmao...
November 15th, 2023 at 5:05 PM ^
If necessary, the chickens will have to be impounded so that their poop can be collected and the shredded bits of expense reports can be extracted and re-assembled.
Funny you should mention that - I was at a job yesterday doing a field verification of the building and the guy walking us through was telling me about a situation his co-worker had to deal with:
Basically, there was a radiation spike in a landfill up-state. So dude had to go and see what's up. Turns out that the source was individual bags of cat poop. Apparently some lady was treating her cat for a thyroid condition and the treatment involved radiation, which then shows up in the cat's poops. She did bag up the poops correctly, but instead waited 80 days for the half-life to elapse on EACH bag, she dumped them all at once, which tripped the sensors. State worker dude was... not pleased that day.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:26 PM ^
Lolololll that’s a great story—thanks
November 15th, 2023 at 8:05 PM ^
Harbaugh's chickens are like Mr. Wu's pigs eating evidence and witnesses.
Excellent.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:25 PM ^
I demand a round 2 of zoom calls with Tiny Tony -
And we'd like to be invited to this one
November 15th, 2023 at 4:27 PM ^
Poor sparty. They just don't have anything in town to talk about; as usual they have to look to AA.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:20 PM ^
Idk why you are clowning sparty just bc Lage went there.
This is a basic journalist step that many places should've done long ago
November 15th, 2023 at 6:01 PM ^
Speaking of that, there hasn't much news on Mel Tucker and his response to being fired for cause. Last I heard, he had 10 or 12 days to respond and that was more than 10 or 12 days ago. Interesting how the media completely dropped that for this.
November 15th, 2023 at 6:21 PM ^
They could talk about their 1-2 basketball team in East Lansing - but, that doesn't seem like a popular topic.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:29 PM ^
I figured as much. Of course, OSU slappies and morons like Mandel and the like will still claim Harbaugh knew, etc, etc. but fuck those losers.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:40 PM ^
To show how stupid the narrative has gotten, Keyshawn Johnson was saying that Harbaugh claimed he didn't know who Stallions was, though he was standing next to the OC and DC. Has anyone heard Harbaugh even mention Connor's name? He has released one statement saying he knew nothing of the Stallions' scheme to record future opponents on site. Keyshawn probably goes to Buckeye podcasts for his information and acts like he has inside information. Richard Sherman, of all people, has consistently said this whole "scandal" is silly.