Why we all share blame for Michigan State-Michigan football rivalry becoming so toxic | Opinion
The simmering, festering animosity between two rival programs combusted late Saturday inside the shared tunnel at Michigan Stadium.
The fuse was lit minutes after Michigan football defeated Michigan State, 29-7, in the 115th installment of this heated series. But the kindling was laid out on social media, fan websites and the internet comments sections of news outlets like this one long before two Wolverines defensive backs, Ja’Den McBurrows and Gemon Green, were separately attacked by a group of Spartans players.
Four of those players – Itayvion “Tank” Brown, Khary Crump, Angelo Grose and Zion Young — have been suspended by MSU coach Mel Tucker indefinitely. Meanwhile, Green has obtained legal counsel, seemingly with the intent of pursuing a civil lawsuit.
The melee, which Jim Harbaugh described roughly 36 hours later as a “traumatic experience,” has prompted a police investigation and already resulted in the suspensions of four Michigan State team members.
Wearing a downcast expression, Harbaugh said Monday he expected criminal charges to be filed.
“An apology will not get the job done,” he added.
But Harbaugh stopped short of saying the rising toxicity in the ongoing football feud between these two teams sparked an episode he called “egregious.”
'I'M SORRY':Mel Tucker apologizes for Michigan State players' actions
“I don’t buy any excuse that’s going to be laid off on the rivalry or the tunnel or any other thing that somebody could possibly blame,” he said. “These are the actions of these individuals and they need to be accountable for them.”
That process will play out for the foreseeable future. But in the meantime, there should be a reckoning about how the undercurrent of antipathy rippling 365 days a year has caused the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry to become one of the most antagonistic in all of sports. The sheer anger that permeates public discourse regarding any topic involving these two programs is palpable, creating a contentious environment where neighbors are also enemies.
On one Michigan State message board, housed by 247Sports.com, there have been various iterations of a long-running thread dedicated toward ridiculing U-M and its supporters. Over on Twitter, fans of both schools have used the platform primarily to troll each other, inciting nasty arguments with inflammatory posts. Some players have become aware of the hostility boiling around them.
One is Michigan sophomore safety Rod Moore, a native of Clayton, Ohio. When he joined the Wolverines last year, Moore was under the assumption no opponent spawned a more visceral reaction than Ohio State.
THE NEXT STEP:Michigan DB Gemon Green retains attorney after suffering concussion in tunnel incident
“But you can see the in-state rivalry is more of a personal thing than just football,” Moore explained. “Just hearing and last year watching the videos, you could just tell.”
Over the years, it has been fueled by various comments and incidents, adding powder to the massive keg that exploded late Saturday.
There was running back Mike Hart’s derisive remark in 2007, when the current Michigan assistant referred to MSU as “little brother” following a four-point victory. Two days later, Spartans coach Mark Dantonio smoldered and shot back, "They need to check themselves sometimes. Let’s just remember, pride comes before the fall. ... They want to mock us, I’m telling them, it’s not over. They want to print that crap all over their locker room. It’s not over and it’ll never be over here. It’s just starting.”
The fighting words would reverberate for almost a decade, as Dantonio and the Spartans won seven of the next eight games in the series while gaining the upper hand in a matchup that had long favored the Wolverines. With his gruff demeanor and stern speech, Dantonio leaned into the animus between the two schools, feeding the bellicosity that mushroomed.
"You might as well just come out and say what you're feeling at some point in time, because you can only be diplomatic for so long," Dantonio huffed in 2014. "The ‘Little Brother’ stuff, all the disrespect, didn't have to go in that direction. We tried to handle ourself with composure. It doesn't come from the coach, it comes from the program. Throwing the stake down in our backyard out here, and coming out there like they're all that.”
THE PUNISHMENT:Mel Tucker suspends 4 MSU players for tunnel altercation at Michigan
Four years later, when the Spartans and Wolverines met again in East Lansing, the tension escalated further. Michigan linebacker Devin Bush furiously dug his cleats into the Spartan midfield logo and scraped at it. The tantrum came after Bush grew annoyed that MSU had disrupted pregame warmups by conducting a ritual where the team, fanned out from sideline to sideline, walked the length of the playing surface. Harbaugh blamed MSU, calling the incident “bush league.” Dantonio responded, “That’s B.S.” With nothing settled, the rivals continued to snipe.
In 2019, defensive back Ambry Thomas, spinning off Hart’s snide remark, alluded to MSU as Michigan’s “little sister.”
The pugnacious rhetoric carried into this season, filling the empty 13-day vacuum preceding this latest showdown. On one of Michigan’s in-house podcasts, running back Donovan Edwards boasted, “We’re going to win; we’re going to win, and we’re going to leave them a no-mercy kind of deal." Asked last Tuesday whether he was aware of some of the comments made by the Wolverines, quarterback Payton Thorne replied, “Yeah, we are.”
Tucker explained that he and his staff had disseminated “bulletin board material,” stoking the embers that were already burning.
RAINER SABIN:How Mel Tucker's program has fallen hard a year after his best win
All of the past episodes, the verbal sparring between the teams and the constant drumbeat of mean-spirited fan interaction created a tinder box that ignited when MSU players lashed out after their loss, besieging Green and McBurrows.
“We’re not here to make any excuses for the behaviors Saturday,” Tucker said. “They are unacceptable.”
They were abhorrent. But that violent outburst didn’t come out of nowhere. The bad blood between these two programs fueled it, adding a disturbing chapter to a rivalry that has become far too toxic.
In some ways, we all share the blame for allowing it to get to this point.
Follow Rainer Sabin on Twitter @RainerSabin.