Threat Level is Proud of Michigan Football For Finally Becoming Exactly Who They Always Wanted to Be

His eyes are tired and heavy, and the Michigan head football coach rubs his temples and sighs. So many fresh-faced, earnest young people, subtly implying that they'd do damn near anything to help Michigan football stay on top of the rickety sled loaded with VHS players that we call the Big Ten, but none of them with the je ne sais quoi that's really necessary to dig in deep and debase yourself in the name of...

And then there he is. A Naval vet. Extensively trained in unarmed combat. Over 300 confirmed kills. Numerous secret raids on Al-Qaeda. Trained in gorilla warfare and the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. A man willing and able to bring to full might of the Marine Corps to bear, their "philosophies and tactics into the sport of football regarding strategies in staffing, recruiting, scouting, intelligence, planning and more."

Jim Harbaugh fights back tears. Can he do it? Can this Connor Stalions really "identi[fy] the opponent's most likely course of action and most dangerous course of action" and "identi[fy] and explo[it] critical vulnerabilities and centers of gravity in the opponent scouting process"? Can he really be that damn good?

Michigan's coach was about to find out.

I think the important thing to keep in mind about this whole Michigan sign stealing is that its hilarious. Dont lose sight of that.

— kevin harrish (@Kevinish) October 20, 2023

Kevin is correct. Everything about the allegations surrounding Michigan football hiring a dude to be some kind of mysterious electronics warfare guru due to his cool name and self-aggrandizing LinkedIn profile is extremely funny.

Stalions is exactly the kind of "pick-me" goofball that a dumbass worried about losing his edge over a rival would hire, and that the rest of the Big Ten is apparently annoyed enough with the Wolverines to call them out on it is also very funny (it should be pointed out that while sign-stealing is an art and pretty much everyone is doing it in some fashion, Big Ten opponents never took the opportunity to accuse noted win-at-any-cost asshole Urban Meyer of doing things "the wrong way" here. Huh!).

Here's what I personally think might've happened:

Connor Stalions, who had been around the Michigan program since (according to him, at least) 2015, was tired of spending thousands of dollars flying back and forth to Ann Arbor just to get coffee for the safeties coach, and decided to put together a killer resume to get hired full time.

Harbaugh and company can't believe their luck that this electronics warfare expert was under their noses the entire time and bring him on in an official capacity, giving him carte blanche to do secret spy shit as long as they don't have to know too much about it.

Stalions' vast network of saboteurs, which includes his mom, a neighbor, and some guy named Pokey, are then given fifty bucks to go to Big Ten games and record playcalls and signs. Stalions takes that information, puts it in an Excel spreadsheet, carefully overlays the letters TS-SCI in 72 point font over it, and laminates everything in a nice little folder that the staff lets him slip to them on Saturdays during games.

Jim Harbaugh may not have personally had any direct knowledge of any of this, but in the same way that I don't have any direct knowledge of how many times my son has picked his nose and wiped it under the dining room table. Sure it happens, but I'm not really keeping track of when or how often.

I do not have the capacity to be in any way upset about or bothered by the above scenario, if that's even close to what took place. I've got dirty socks that give me more consternation than Michigan football trying to get an edge over their opponents while operating in an extremely grey area of NCAA rules.

What is in fact annoying to me is the reaction from Michigan fans about all of this, but we'll get to that in a second because oh yeah, Michigan beat Michigan State 49-0 on Saturday.

OKAY FINE, FOOTBALL, WHATEVER

A laugher from start to finish, made possible by Michigan's apparent cheating, this game followed basically the same template their last four matchups have followed; a mediocre running game being propped up by Heisman-level efficiency from J.J. McCarthy, and an absolutely lock-down defense having a great time teeing off on some of the worst offenses in America.

Michigan State, bravely taking the field in the face of what might be the most sophisticated subterfuge operation in sports history, managed a grand total of 182 yards of offense. Michigan cheated... the Spartans out of any momentum they might've had by picking off Michigan State quarterbacks twice, once for a touchdown.

I continue to be a little surprised at how intermittently clunky the Wolverine rushing attack looks, but their opponents have been selling out to stop Blake Corum and daring McCarthy (and the full might of US Naval tactics) to beat them. Which he has, handily, so maybe it's time for a different approach, I don't know.

Oh, and Hitler showed up??? I hate that guy!

CONNOR STALIONS DRAMATIC REENACTMENT OF THE WEEK

THREAT LEVEL

The current Michigan world response to the allegations of illicit sign stealing is to insist that if it happened, it's cool as hell actually, and Jim Harbaugh's Wolverines are just a bunch of wild badass dudes who your favorite team can't beat. Kind of like the Cream of Wheat version of the Miami Hurricanes in the 1980s, or a 5th grader showing up to school with a press-on tattoo of a motorcycle and rolling up his sleeves all day. They're making jokes and t-shirts and generally enjoying the time-honored tradition of having a top-ranked football team embroiled in scandal.

Which is all extremely rich from a fanbase that has spent the last few decades impersonating a very lazy Richard Nixon, painstakingly cataloging every perceived misstep by every one of their rivals in the hope that they'll finally get busted by the feds.

That's from Michigan's fan site of record after the 2019 loss to the Buckeyes, still angry about the heinous crime of Justin Fields taking online classes, soothing themselves in the Epsom salts of smug superiority.

And if that's your brand, that's fine! But own it! Don't spend years looking down your noses at the rest of the football world, shaking your fists at Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer while beatifying yourselves as the saintly protectors of decency in collegiate athletics, and then turn around and decide one day that it's cool to thumb your nose at the NCAA. I mean, it is cool, but Michigan doing it is like a kid showing up at a party they weren't invited to with half a bottle of Yellow Tail they stole from mom's pantry.

To be fair, cognitive dissonance hits hard. After all, this is the program that in the last 365 days had to fire the son of a legendary head coach (said coach, you'll remember, is accused of knowing about the abuse of players and not doing anything about it) for serving up some extremely gross online takes, fired an assistant coach for unspecified computer crimes, is under investigation for illicit hamburgers to recruits and lying to the NCAA, and let a star player stay on the field despite pending gun charges. I guess it's possible to ignore all of that and still pretend you care about a rigged raffle forty years ago, but it can't be easy.

So maybe laughing off the next scandal on the pile is just a natural defensive reaction, but:

That's true if you believe in a black and white world where kids selling their own merchandise is exactly as bad as ignoring sexual assault, but if that's where you park your car, then damn; I guess Michigan really is a bunch of crooks, stuck down here in the muck and the mire with the rest of us.

The Threat Level is SEVERE. Because Michigan football, which is now as successful and scandal-ridden as every other big time program, has finally become who they really wanted to be all along: Ohio State.