I've found a series by Tom Ley on Defector about the Michigan sign stealing scandal. He writes it in the style of John LeCarre, and it's magnificent.

Report: Connor Stalions Lurked In The Shadows At 11 Big Ten Games:

The need to find Stalions and bring him to justice grows more urgent with time, as every day brings new revelations about the breadth and scope of Stalions's alleged spying campaign. Yesterday, ESPN published a report laying out the details of Stalions's tradecraft, and it makes one thing abundantly clear: We're dealing with a tier one operator who isn't afraid of a little wet work.

As for how Stalions went about surreptitiously recording the action on those sidelines, he made use of a system of espionage that could not have been produced by a civilian mind:

Stalions held his smartphone up and appeared to film the home team's sideline the entire game.

To the NCAA's investigators, I say: good luck. Connor Stalions is gone. You think a man who knows how to purchase football tickets with his credit card and operate a smartphone's camera feature for three hours can't disappear at the drop of a hat? You think a man who, according to his own LinkedIn page, excels at identifying and exploiting "critical vulnerabilities and centers of gravity in the opponent scouting process" doesn't know when the heat is on? Connor Stalions acquired $100,000 in cash and two clean passports from one of his dead-drop locations before Crooked Jim even got out of bed and put on his fake glasses this morning. You'll never see Connor Stalions again. Connor Stalions is a ghost.

This is where it got going.

Stalions Resurfaces:

He'd spent the last 10 years running from the things that used to matter. He'd force out of his mind any thought that wasn't about what was right in front of his face. He got good at this. He became a man who only existed in the present.

That's what happens when you throw in with a cowboy from MI6 who breaks into your flat in the middle of the night with some petrified girl in tow, ranting about a super-spook named Connor Stalions, intel breaches from Whitehall to Ann Arbor, and a grand conspiracy that threatened to swallow everyone whole. Even now, he could still admit to himself that the kid had made a compelling case. But it wasn't the intel that had convinced him to go off-book with him. It was the conviction in the kid's eye, the belief that they were close to something big. He couldn't resist being a part of that.

That's how he ended up skidding off the fast track to station chief and spending the last 10 years chained to a desk in the basement at Langley. They were waiting for him as soon as he stepped off the plane. He spent four hours in a sweat box with two heavies he'd never seen before and would never see again. They explained to him that it was the official stance of the United States government and its allies abroad that Connor Stalions never existed. They told him that Stalions had been conjured up by the kid after he let go of the rope working a message board cell in Columbus. "Lost himself to fantasies," one of them said. "Just another bitter Buckeye fan," said the other. It was all bullshit, of course, but he was too much of a coward to say anything. Before they left, he was told where to report the following day. It wasn't a prison sentence, but it wasn't much better.

But he was alone. He always had been. That's why he'd allowed his stupid ideas to bring him here, to this ridiculous end. He'd wanted revenge, but not as much as he'd wanted a way back into the world. He didn't know exactly how, but he was sure that Stalions could have given him that.

Two breaths from the end, he allowed himself the thought one last time. Maybe someone will come.

The Connor Stalions Affair Now Features A Double Agent:

I think it's pretty clear what happened here. Michigan's rivals really thought they could come after the Connor Stalions and not suffer any consequences, and we are now witnessing the beginning of them being disabused of that notion. Stalions must have been onto this guy the whole time. Any signs he stole from Michigan were signs that Stalions wanted him to steal, and now he's under Stalions's thumb. If this guy ever wants to see his family again, he better continue defending the good names of Jim Harbaugh and Michigan football.

It's Been Stalions All Along:

You see what this means, don't you? All this time we've been chasing our tails. We thought Stalions was just a puppet, and I've been doing my nut in trying to figure out who was pulling the strings. But don't you see it? He wasn't taking his marching orders from Jimmy H. and the rest of the boys in maize and blue, he was giving them. It's Stalions. It's always been Stalions.

I can't trust anyone at the Circus, and we both know that you're still the best man we've got, no matter how long you've been out of the game.

You've actually seen Stalions, haven't you? In Geneva. My God, what was that like? Tell me, how did it feel to see him in the flesh? It must have felt like a monster crawled from under your bed and stared you right in the eye. How I wish I could have been there. How I wish I could have seen him myself, just once.

We live in strange times, my boy, and I am sad to say that you and I are running out of time.

Report: Connor Stalions Was Low-Rated Online Seller Of Used Vacuums, Which He Stored On His Porch, Annoying His Neighbor Jeff:

The mystery of Stalions continues to inspire top-notch journalism. This week, the Wall Street Journal’s Laine Higgins delved into Stalions’s background, his lifelong Michigan fandom, and his side hustle that involved selling used vacuum cleaners online. Per Higgins’s report, Stalions stored the vacuums on the porch of his $485,000 home in Ann Arbor.

Laine Higgins on X: "Not long after Connor Stalions moved to Ann Arbor in 2022, his HOA sued him for allegedly running a business out of his unit (note the vacuums). In legal documents, Stalions said the suit was the design of a Michigan State fan hoping to distract him.

This is the kind of American storage ingenuity that makes this country great, and also makes me understand why people choose to live in neighborhoods governed by Homeowners Associations.

I really enjoy the idea that the Michigan football program would be ruined if Connor Stalions had to spend all his time fighting his HOA instead of updating the “Michigan Manifesto” and selling vacuums online.

The WSJ report led to more: Stalions’s business was incorporated as an LLC in Wyoming. The records list Michigan RB Blake Corum as one of the parties in the corporation. When asked on Tuesday if he had a business with Stalions, Corum was firm: “Heck no!” He said his lawyer was looking into it. To be clear, this is Michigan’s starting running back, being forced to deny that he resold vacuums with Stalions.

“That’s something I’m not really into,” Corum said of the reports of Stalions’ apparent vacuum cleaner business. “Vacuums aren’t my thing. I’m a clean person, but I’m not a cleaner. Vacuums aren’t my thing. I don’t know anything about that.”

Connor Stalions Inspires Michigan Law Professor To Ask: Are Laws Even Real?:

Stalions is already a legend, a ghost, a vacuum-reselling figure of myth; it is now on the institution to keep this already grandiose sign-stealing story alive.

But Michigan is still fighting the good fight in defense of the three core pillars of American law: due process, equally applied rules, and "Fuck you, we're rich."

Another example of this you-didn't-ask-me-but strategy of defending the football team’s right to use Stalions while simultaneously letting him twist in the wind of unemployment (vacuum cleaner sales being a notoriously volatile business) comes in the form of a missive found in the Yale Journal Of Regulation from someone purporting to be Daniel A. Crane, a law professor at the U of M. We don't doubt that Crane is who he says he is, but Stalions has set an extremely high bar for "trust but verify."

Connor Stalions is the Robin Hood of our age—stealing from Rutgers to give to the Maize and Blue, not because it’s just or virtuous but because there is nothing stopping him from doing it. If those ingrates at Ann Arbor don't name a corporate espionage endowment after him, or at the very least sell balaclavas embroidered with "I'm With Connor" at Michigan Stadium, the NCAA and Big 10 should step in and make it happen. After all, you have to have a code, even when your gig is denying that the code can stand up in court.

This is the apex of the entire series.

Stalions's People:

"You know I met him once." He was surprised to hear himself say it.

"Who?"

"Stalions."

"No shit. When?"

"Before the surveillance program, before the vacuums, before the girl, before the CMU op. We didn't know who he was at the time, of course.

Our job back then was pretty simple: find the ones who had ended up in the wilderness and offer them a way back. Impress upon them that they only had two choices: sign on with us or go back to the Great Lakes and face another 3-9 season.

But the more I talked the more inscrutable he became. He sat there like a piece of marble...

He gave no reply but I thought I saw a hint of revulsion flash across his face. I thought I'd found a way in. You must make a new life, I said.

"I could have sworn I was getting through to him, but of course all I was doing was revealing the chink in my own armor.

I brought a box of Detroit style pizza with me, and placed it on the table in front of him when I arrived. He didn't reach for it, let alone look at it. I tried to encourage him by putting a cold bottle of Bell's Two Hearted on the table. I pulled my own commemorative Buckeyes bottle opener from my pocket and slid it across the table.

I was still holding onto that look that I had seen on his face the day before. I believed I had seen something in him that was superior to mere fandom, not realizing that it was my own reflection.

He left the pizza untouched, but when he stood up he grabbed the beer and the bottle opener and took them with him."

"Do you think he ever really thought about coming over?"

"I'm sure he never gave it a thought. I suspect he spent the night working out how he was going to stand up his network once he got back to Ann Arbor, and how he was going to stick the knife in Rodriguez. He was fired two seasons later, incidentally, and Stalions fell off our radar as he went about reactivating all his old agents. Harbaugh was among them, no doubt. It's strange to think that all that time I was in that awful room, babbling at him and revealing my own weaknesses, his thoughts were completely beyond me, already resolving around Harbaugh and new surveillance techniques and the game that we just lived through. He knew this night was coming, even back then. I couldn't properly make him for a fanatic then, but he made me for what I was."

He took four steps from where he was standing to the door and gripped the handle. Before he turned it, he looked at Michaels. A beat passed.

"Sir?"

"He still has my bottle opener."