Man says U-M staffer paid him to tape Big 10 foes
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Dan Murphy, ESPN Staff Writer
Suspended Michigan football staffer Connor Stalions compensated at least one person for recording future Wolverine opponents with “a couple hundred dollars” and a ticket to a Michigan home game, according to the person.
The man, a former Division 3 football player and coach, spoke to ESPN on the condition that his name not be published because he was concerned about his privacy. He is the first person who was involved in the alleged cheating scheme to publicly share details about their role.
He said he attended three Big Ten games during the past two years to record the sidelines of a future Michigan opponent. He said he uploaded the videos he took on his personal cell phone to a shared iPhone photo album, but does not know who else other than Stalions had access to the album.
He said he was wary of Stalions’ plan “to a degree” when he was first approached to tape the games, but felt that if someone from Michigan’s staff was asking him to do this that it must fall safely in the gray area of college football’s sign-stealing rules.
“I didn’t like it, but it’s a gray line,” he said. “You can call me naive, but no one is reading the bylaws. I’m not a contractual lawyer. …I just felt like if you’re not doing it, you’re not trying to get ahead.”
It is against NCAA rules for staff members of a football program to scout games of future opponents in person. The NCAA football rulebook also prohibits “an opposing player, coach or other team personnel” from recording an opponent’s signals through audio or video. The NCAA is investigating claims that Michigan used a large network of individuals to tape games of future opponents. Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh denied any knowledge of the alleged scheme in a statement last week. A Michigan spokesman added on Friday that “due to the ongoing investigation, no one from Michigan will be able to comment beyond what was shared last week.”
According to a LinkedIn page he has recently deleted, Stalions is a former officer in the Marine Corps who was hired as a member of the program’s recruiting staff in 2022 and worked with the team as a volunteer for several years before then. Photos from recent Michigan games show he frequently stood next to the team’s play callers on the sideline during games. Michigan suspended Stalions with pay last Friday, and sources told ESPN that the NCAA is seeking his computer as part of their investigation.
Stalions did not return multiple phone calls seeking a comment for this story.
The source who spoke to ESPN Friday said he attended games at Rutgers and Penn State last season and another game at Penn State last month.
“I only did a half because it was pouring rain and they were playing UMass. It didn’t pay well enough so I was like, ‘yeah, I’m not staying here.'”
He said that before the news of the investigation was made public Stalions also provided him a ticket to this coming Saturday’s game between Indiana and Penn State. He does not plan to attend.
He said at the games he attended he filmed every drive from his seat in the stands about 15-20 rows above field level. He said he tried to film wide enough to include the sideline and the majority of the team’s on-field formation so members of the Michigan staff would be able to sync his videos with other film and decode the team’s signals. He said he was able to capture enough of the coaches on the sideline that their signals were visible for someone who zoomed in on the recorded video.
“A lot of people may say you can just rip that from the All-22 [wide-shot game film]. Well, it’s not that easy,” he said. “This makes it easier to mirror things up and get those tendencies.”
He said for the three games he taped he received roughly $1,000 to cover his travel expenses and pay for his time. He said Stalions paid him from a personal Venmo account.
Stalions purchased tickets to at least 35 total games featuring 12 other Big Ten teams and several other potential College Football Playoff teams during the last three years, sources told ESPN earlier this week. The Washington Post reported earlier this week that investigators hired by an unknown source to look into Michigan’s operation found evidence that the scouting trips were expected to cost more than $15,000 this year. Stalions, according to the university’s website, received an annual salary of $55,000.
The source said he has not yet been contacted by any investigators from the NCAA or elsewhere.
ESPN contacted several other individuals this week whose names were connected to ticket purchases made by Stalions. One woman based in Jacksonville said she was friends with Stalions from their time together in the military but hung up abruptly when asked about attending last year’s Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville. One other former Michigan staff member, Andrew Barlage, was among the names connected to tickets purchased by Stalions. According to Barlage’s LinkedIn page he was the head recruiting intern at Michigan in 2021 and worked as a graduate assistant for Akron’s football program in 2022. He did not respond to multiple phone calls seeking comment.
The source who did speak with ESPN said he was not aware of how many people helped tape the games. He said he assumed someone else was helping to fund the trips, but that he only ever spoke to Stalions.
“I wasn’t doing it for personal gain or hoping to get my foot in the door if Conor becomes a head coach someday,” he said. “It was just I got to go to some Big Ten games, alright sweet. And everyone else I felt was doing it to some degree. It’s a billion-dollar industry. You’re going to work in the gray areas as best you can.”
ESPN’s Pete Thamel contributed to this story.
LOS ANGELES — Dodgers right-hander Brusdar Graterol will miss the first half of next season after having surgery to repair the labrum in his right shoulder.
The surgery was performed Thursday by Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the Dodgers announced Friday.
Graterol is expected to return in the second half of the 2025 season.
Graterol pitched in seven games during the regular season and three games in the World Series against the New York Yankees, which the Dodgers won in five games. He allowed three hits over 2⅓ scoreless innings in those World Series appearances.
The 26-year-old was slowed this season by shoulder inflammation and a hamstring injury.
Graterol, a hard-throwing Venezuelan, spent his first season in the majors with Minnesota in 2019, and the Twins traded him to the Dodgers before the 2020 season. For his career, he has a 2.78 ERA and 11 saves in 188 games.
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Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff Writer
At SEC media days in July, Steve Sarkisian inadvertently described a good portion of college football in a single line. “I feel like when you go to Arkansas,” the Texas Longhorns coach said, “I almost at times feel like they hate Texas more than they like themselves. That’s a real rivalry.”
Later that week, Arkansas Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman confirmed Sarkisian’s take. “We hadn’t played Texas for years,” he said, “and when we played them a couple of years back, it was the most excited our fan base has been in a while. So I would say he’s probably right.”
Houston Nutt can testify. Nutt grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. He idolized legendary Arkansas coach Frank Broyles and watched him battle Darrell Royal and the Longhorns before playing for the Razorbacks himself.
“When Texas came to play Arkansas, it was this huge, huge thing,” he told ESPN in 2019. “I remember being taught at the age of 6 outside War Memorial Stadium [in Little Rock] how to do the Hook ‘Em Horns Down sign.”
Nutt beat the Horns as the Hogs’ coach, a 27-6 win in the 2000 Cotton Bowl, Arkansas’ first bowl win since 1985. He turned around, and threw the Horns Down to the Arkansas fans.
“It was a sea of red, and they were mostly doing the Hook ‘Em Horns Down,” Nutt said. “What did I do? I can’t help it. I’m right there with ’em.”
Conference realignment has broken countless rivalries through the years. There are no Oklahoma-Oklahoma State games on the schedule; Missouri and Kansas haven’t played since 2011; Cal has traded playing UCLA for playing NC State; Oregon-Oregon State and Washington-Washington State have been moved from the traditional bottom of the schedule to the top; Pitt and West Virginia play only sporadically, as do Oklahoma and Nebraska. But in the “thank God for small favors” department, this latest round of realignment at least reignited a few rivalries to replace the further ones we lost. Longtime Big 8 and Big 12 rivals Oklahoma and Missouri played this past Saturday for the first time in 13 years (and celebrated the occasion with a particularly wacky finish), and on Nov. 30 not only will we get our first Texas vs. Texas A&M game since 2011 but it also might have enormous College Football Playoff stakes.
While we wait for Aggies-Horns, however, we get a rivalry game that, for quite a while, outshined Texas-A&M and defined Southwest Conference football. On Saturday, Texas and Arkansas will play for just the fourth time in 20 years and will play as conference rivals for the first time in 33. Most rivalries fit into certain parameters — the dueling heavyweights that split the wins over time, the heavyweight against the aspirant that measures itself by how well it’s faring against the big dog, etc. — but over the course of a few decades, Arkansas-Texas fit into multiple categories. Arkansas was the aggrieved and aspirant underdog for much of the series, but for much of the 1960s, when Royal and Broyles were at the top of their respective games, this was the biggest game in college football. Whichever flavor it takes on at a given time, this game remains spicy.
Texas is 8-1 and listed as a favorite by more than two touchdowns Saturday, while Arkansas is 5-4, having handed Tennessee its only loss of the season but suffered two blowout losses in its past four games. The Razorbacks are volatile underdogs; the Longhorns are SEC title favorites; and, for at least a little while Saturday, Razorback Stadium will be an absolute cauldron. To prepare ourselves, let’s look back at 10 of the most noteworthy games in this revived rivalry’s history.
No. 3 Texas 20, No. 14 Arkansas 0 (1946)
“Steers Trounce Tough Porkers For 5th Victory” was the headline in the Austin American. At 3-0-1, Arkansas was off to its best start in 13 years, and for the first time these teams met as mutually ranked foes. But Texas, also unbeaten and the winner of three of the past four Southwest Conference (SWC) crowns, handled both the moment and the muggy conditions better. Future pro and college football Hall of Famer Bobby Layne threw a pair of touchdown passes — one to Hub Bechtol for 50 yards, one to Jim Canady for 47 — and the Longhorns had scored all their points by halftime. This was a pretty common result: Aside from a mid-1930s run in which Texas lost its way as a program and Arkansas won five of six games between them, UT dominated the early stages of this rivalry, winning 29 of the first 35 battles. It’s been a lot closer since then.
This was the high-water mark for the “Steers,” by the way, as they would fall via road upset to both Rice and TCU, handing Arkansas only its second SWC title. The Razorbacks would head to Dallas, where they endured a 0-0 tie with LSU in the Cotton Bowl.
No. 3 Texas 13, No. 12 Arkansas 12 (1959)
After falling apart under Edwin Price in the mid-1950s, Texas righted the ship by hiring Royal, a former Oklahoma Sooner, to lead the program in 1957. In 1959 the Longhorns embarked on a run of nine top-10 finishes and two national titles in 14 years. Royal won his first two games against Arkansas by a combined 41-6, but second-year head coach Broyles also had things up and running by 1959. The Razorbacks would enjoy eight top-10 finishes in 11 years from 1959 to 1969; in this tight loss, they served notice as to what was coming.
As with much of 1950s college football, this game was decided by disasters. Both teams lost four fumbles; Arkansas recovered a loose ball to set up its first touchdown, but with Texas trailing 12-7 in the third quarter, another future Hall of Famer, Lance Alworth, muffed a punt, which set up a winning touchdown pass from Bart Shirley to Jack Collins. Between 1959 and 1969, eight of 11 Steers-Porkers games would be decided by five or fewer points.
No. 8 Arkansas 14, No. 1 Texas 13 (1964)
Texas won its first national title under Royal in 1963; the Longhorns shined in big games that season, beating No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 2 Navy by a combined 56-13, but they managed only a 17-13 win over Arkansas in Fayetteville. They advanced their winning streak to 15 games early in 1964, but Broyles was building a title-worthy squad of his own by then.
For the third time in four years, this was a matchup of top-10 teams. The most famous members of the 1964 Razorbacks were future Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and future college and NFL title winner Jimmy Johnson, but future Arkansas coach Ken Hatfield made the difference in this one. His 81-yard punt return gave Arkansas a 7-0 halftime lead, and after Texas tied the score in the fourth quarter, Fred Marshall found Bobby Crockett for a 34-yard touchdown to put Arkansas ahead once more. With about a minute left, Ernie Koy scored on a 1-yard plunge; Royal, entirely uninterested in a tie, elected to go for two points and the win, but a pass attempt came up short. Texas’ winning streak was over, and Arkansas would go on to finish 11-0 and score a share of its first national title.
No. 3 Arkansas 27, No. 1 Texas 24 (1965)
By October 1965, Arkansas had extended its winning streak to 16 games, winning its first four games of 1965 by a combined 114-33. But Texas had leapfrogged the Razorbacks to get back to No. 1, thanks in part to a 19-0 win over Oklahoma. That put the chip firmly back on Arkansas’ shoulder.
With the extra dose of motivation — plus, perhaps, some divine intervention: Fayetteville’s First Baptist Church famously posted, “Football is only a game, eternal things are spiritual. Nevertheless, beat Texas” that week — Arkansas raced to an early lead thanks to a pair of Phil Harris fumbles. Martine Bercher recovered the first one in the end zone, then Tommy Trantham took another one 77 yards for a score.
Arkansas went up 20-0 after a Jon Brittenum-to-Bobby Crockett touchdown, but Texas charged back. It was 20-11 by halftime, and David Conway’s 34-yard field goal made it 24-20 Longhorns with just five minutes left. Brittenum scored from a yard out with 1:32 remaining, though, and Arkansas had its second of three straight wins in the series.
The Hogs would run their overall winning streak to 22 before falling to LSU 14-7 in the Cotton Bowl.
No. 1 Texas 15, No. 2 Arkansas 14 (1969)
Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Texas usually played Oklahoma and Arkansas back-to-back in early October, but Roone Arledge, the innovative head of ABC Sports, had an idea in the offseason. Texas had finished 1968 as the hottest team in the country, winning its last nine games and averaging 37 points per game with offensive coordinator Emory Bellard’s innovative wishbone scheme. Arkansas, meanwhile, finished 10-1 with only a 39-29 loss at Texas. The Longhorns and Razorbacks finished third and sixth, respectively, in the AP poll and headed into 1969, college football’s centennial season, as obvious national title contenders.
According to Terry Frei’s “Horns, Hogs, and Nixon’s Coming,” ABC publicist (and future ESPN analyst) Beano Cook pored over the schedules and determined that Arkansas, Texas and Penn State all had good chances of going unbeaten. “My recommendation involved Penn State and Arkansas finishing the regular season with perfect records and then playing for the national title,” Cook told Frei. “I said we should move Texas-Arkansas to December 6, because I thought Texas might be undefeated then, too.” Arledge told the coaches that former Oklahoma coach and politician Bud Wilkinson could make sure that new President Richard Nixon was likely to attend the game as well. It was going to be a spectacle unlike anything college football had seen.
Sure enough, the Longhorns and Razorbacks both reached December unbeaten (as did Penn State), and Nixon was there in the stands for a game that somehow lived up to all expectations.
With Texas’ offense discombobulated early — the Horns turned the ball over on their first two drives — Arkansas scored on a short Bill Burnett run and, early in the third quarter, a 29-yard catch by star receiver Chuck Dicus. Texas quarterback James Street scored on the first play of the fourth quarter, then scored on a 2-point conversion as well. (Royal decided before the game that he once again wanted to avoid a tie at all costs.)
With the score 14-8, Arkansas drove the length of the field and was on the verge of putting the game away until Danny Lester picked off a Bill Montgomery pass in the end zone. Then came “Right 53 Veer Pass”: On a fourth-and-3 near midfield, Street threw a bomb to Randy Peschel for 44 yards.
#TBT – 1969: Texas defeats Arkansas 15-14.#ThisIsTexas #HookEm pic.twitter.com/xoqn5cbhFm
— Texas Football (@TexasFootball) October 17, 2019
Two plays later, Texas went ahead with a short Jim Bertelsen touchdown. Arkansas drove near field goal range in the final seconds, but Tom Campbell picked off Montgomery to ice the game, and Nixon declared Texas the national champion in the locker room after the game. (This rather annoyed Penn State’s Joe Paterno, whose team was also unbeaten.)
College football’s explosion as a television product can be ascribed to countless things, but ABC’s innovative approach to broadcasting, followed by a couple of all-time classics — this and 1971 Oklahoma-Nebraska, to name two — in short succession certainly didn’t hurt.
No. 1 Texas 42, No. 4 Arkansas 7 (1970)
The sequel often fails to live up to the billing. Almost exactly a year after the 1969 classic, Texas was riding a 29-game winning streak, while 9-1 Arkansas was ranked fourth in the AP poll and looking for revenge on national television. It didn’t quite work out.
Texas rushed for 464 yards — Bertelsen and Steve Worster combined for 315 on their own, with five of the Longhorns’ six touchdowns — and picked off Montgomery three times. After a goal-line stand by the Longhorns’ defense prevented Arkansas from tying the score early on, the floodgates opened.
The tide had again turned in the rivalry. Arkansas would finally get some measure of revenge the next year with a win in Little Rock, but after winning four of seven over the Horns between 1960-66, the Hogs won only once between 1966-79.
No. 8 Texas 28, No. 3 Arkansas 21 (1978)
A generation ended when both Royal and Broyles retired after matching 5-5-1 seasons in 1976. They both ended up hiring their younger replacements — 38-year old Fred Akers at UT, 40-year old Lou Holtz at Arkansas — as their schools’ respective athletic directors.
Both led immediate rebounds. Holtz won 30 games, Akers won 29, and both schools finished in the AP top 12 each year from 1977 to 1979. In 1978, Akers’ Longhorns played a unique role, too: spoiler. They welcomed unbeaten Arkansas to Austin and ended the Hogs’ 11-game winning streak. Two Randy McEachern touchdown passes in the final minute of the first half turned a tie into a 20-7 Texas lead, and when Arkansas charged back to take the lead, Johnny “Lam” Jones caught McEachern’s third TD pass, and Johnnie Johnson picked off one pass and broke up another on a fourth down to seal the win. This was the first of four straight upsets in the series, with the lower-ranked team winning every year from 1978 to 1981. My favorite rivalries are the ones that make no sense.
Arkansas 42, No. 1 Texas 11 (1981)
And now for maybe the most shocking result in the history of the rivalry. Akers’ Longhorns entered the 1981 game No. 1 in the country, having just blown out Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma 34-14 to move to 4-0. Arkansas, meanwhile, had fallen out of the AP rankings two weeks earlier after a road loss to an awful TCU team that would finish 2-7-2. Surely a blowout was in store, right?
This was indeed a blowout, but not the one anyone expected. Two fumbles and a safety from an airmailed punt snap gave Arkansas a quick 15-0 lead, and the Longhorns never got closer. The Hogs led 25-3 at halftime and 39-3 after three quarters; Texas actually outgained the home team 421-323, but seven turnovers sabotaged all efforts. A turnaround in the series? Not so much. The last two Akers-Holtz battles ended up a combined 64-10 in favor of the team in burnt orange. But this one was an awfully big thumb in the eye, and it would prevent the Horns from winning a national title — they ended up second in the polls behind Clemson.
Arkansas 14, Texas 13 (1991)
“Ain’t no rematch. Best thing of all, ain’t gonna be no rematch.” That’s Arkansas head coach Jack Crowe, celebrating a Hogs win in the final SWC matchup between the two rivals. He had just weathered one of the silliest games in the series to secure permanent (well, permanent-ish) bragging rights. Arkansas led 14-0 at halftime after touchdowns from Ron Dickerson Jr. and Kerwin Price, but a 14-yard Phil Brown touchdown made it 14-7 heading into the fourth quarter, and a 55-yard burst from Brown tied the score. Or at least, it should have: The Longhorns missed the PAT, then missed a 39-yard field goal attempt with 3:45 left.
The teams weren’t particularly memorable, even if the game was. Crowe’s Razorbacks went 6-6 in their last season in the SWC, while David McWilliams’ fifth and final Texas team went 5-6. The teams had weathered ups and downs, splitting the previous six meetings and producing zero top-10 finishes from 1984 to 1991 as the SWC wobbled through controversies and discontent. In 1990, the SEC announced it was adding Arkansas as part of an expansion to 10 teams; the plan had originally included adding not only the Hogs but also Texas and Texas A&M, but the state legislature intervened, and only Arkansas was on its way out the door. So was Crowe: Broyles fired him (and then tried to get away with announcing he’d resigned) after Arkansas began its SEC tenure with a 10-3 loss to The Citadel.
No. 7 Texas 22, Arkansas 20 (2004)
Since 1991, this has basically been a series of pent-up aggression: Whichever rival takes an early lead when they meet just keeps wailing away for a while. Arkansas won two bowl meetings (the 2000 Cotton Bowl and the 2014 Texas Bowl) by a combined 58-13, Texas won a home game in Austin 52-10 in 2008, and Arkansas won a home game in Fayetteville, Steve Sarkisian’s second game in charge at Texas, by a score of 40-21 in 2021.
A 2003-04 home-and-home series produced some drama, though. Arkansas upset No. 6 Texas by a 38-28 margin in 2003, using an early 21-0 run to build some space, getting 217 combined rushing yards from Cedric Cobbs and quarterback Matt Jones and scoring every time it needed to down the stretch.
But with a young quarterback by the name of Vince Young taking over for UT in 2004, the Longhorns got some revenge. Texas built a quick 9-0 advantage with a safety from a bombed punt snap and a 49-yard TD from Young to David Thomas. And from there, it was the Cedric Benson show: The star running back produced 201 yards from scrimmage and scored via both ground and air. Texas held a 22-17 lead into the fourth quarter, and after forcing an Arkansas field goal with 9:58 left, the Longhorns’ defense forced three consecutive turnovers to ice the win. Arkansas would stumble to a disappointing 5-6 record, while Mack Brown’s Longhorns would finish 11-1 before winning the national title a year later.
The most recent Hogs-Horns game might turn out to have been pretty useful. “I don’t know what Darrell Royal did to Arkansas back in the day,” Sarkisian joked with reporters this week, “but they absolutely hate our guts. And I think we learned that the first time around when we went there.”
Texas knows what it’s walking into, at least. They know to expect a Horns Down or two, though we’ll have to wait and see if Sam Pittman gets in on the act.
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