Connor Stalions opens up on his relationship with Bryce Underwood, how it started

Connor Stalions built himself quite a reputation after becoming the face of sign-stealing in college football. Stalions was the notorious frontman of Michigan’s 2023 scandal that led to an ongoing NCAA investigation into the Wolverines’ advanced scouting techniques in prior seasons.

Because of his notoriety — including the 2024 Netflix “Sign Stealer” documentary — Stalions’ hiring at Belleville High, home of 2025 No. 1 overall recruit and eventual Michigan QB signee Bryce Underwood, at the end of last season caught plenty of national attention. The pair even took a viral picture together, effectively confirming the news.

But at least according to Stalions, his relationship with Underwood — who flipped his commitment from LSU to Michigan on Nov. 21, 2024, just two days before the aforementioned photo was taken — was purely professional. That is how he tells it.

During an hour-long sitdown with On3’s J.D. PicKell, Stalions pulled back the curtain on how he ended up as Belleville’s new offensive coordinator late last season. That led to his thoughts on the Wolverines’ early-enrollee quarterback.

“I get there and my first time meeting Bryce was the Sunday after the Michigan-Michigan State game (on Oct. 26, 2024) and right away the first thing I told him was … because obviously it’s kind of funny and we’re both kind of star-struck because he’s like, ‘I just watched your documentary’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re Bryce Underwood,'” Stalions told PicKell. “So I told him, ‘Look, obviously you know where I’d want you to play. I’m not here to talk about that. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out I love Michigan and would like to see you at Michigan. I’m here to just help you win, help you grow from a football standpoint and so on.’ And that first day, we were there for like 12 hours talking ball, the guy’s obsessed with football. We got along very, very well, we still have a good relationship just because of football.”

During the discussion, Stalions told PicKell the move from Detroit-Mumford High, where he was the team’s defensive coordinator and interim head coach during the 2024 high school season, to Belleville was simply about knowing the right people.

“A couple of coaches that I know pretty well that have significant Belleville ties, when our season ended at Mumford and … (after) Belleville had lost their last regular-season game, it was like a ‘Hey, we want you to go in and help out with the offense and get these boys right,’” Stalions recalled to PicKell.

Of course, once Stalions and Underwood met, it was kismet for the two football fanatics. That should be music to the ears of fellow Michigan fans.

“When I was with him at Belleville, my opinion of him — forget about the football — was, ‘Man, this guy has teh work ethic of an NFL player right now,” Stalions told PicKell. “There’s not going to be an adjustment. He had some questions about Michigan, but we really didn’t talk about Michigan too much. … We did use Michigan’s pre-snap nomenclature for the playoffs with their formations and everything.

“We talked football 99-percent off the time, we didnt’ talk recruiting,” Stalions added. “We didn’t really talk much about that.”

Connor Stalions still hopes to be Michigan head coach one day: ‘I’ll outwait anyone’

The famed Connor Stalions joined On3’s J.D. PicKell to discuss the future of Michigan, his relationship with star recruit quarterback Bryce Underwood and everything in between. It’s evident the former Wolverines assistant turned Netflix star still has big dreams involving his favorite team.

Since his involvement in the Michigan sign-stealing scandal and subsequent time coaching high school football, Stalions has become a person of interest in Ann Arbor and throughout the college football world as a whole. What does he yearn for though? Being the head coach of the Wolverines one day, of course.

“Of course,” Stalions told PicKell, responding to whether the Michigan job is the North Star for him in his coaching career. “I’ll out-wait anyone. Whenever it’s time.”

Now that would be a wild turn of events that even Netflix couldn’t script. Stalions would do just about anything to become the head coach of the Wolverines in the future — except one key thing. PicKell asked Stalions whether he would take a job as an assistant at another Big Ten school for a bit, if it meant the path led back to Michigan.

“If it’s not Ohio State [or] Michigan State,” Stalions clarified. Even if it meant achieving his No. 1 goal, Stalions would refuse to join the Buckeyes. “They’d be crazy to do that. I think they’d know that if I were actually at Ohio State, we would, you know, I don’t know — go 11-0, and then, you know, take a knee when we’re down or something late in the game.”

— On3’s Steve Samra contributed to this report.