I do have a little brother. Two people could not be more competitive than we are. And there is no shortage of spirited trash talk on the golf course or across a Ping-Pong table.
Have we had our differences? Yes. But we don't hate each other and have never beaten each other up. That's because family is family and a game is a game, and adults should grow out of childish and impulsive behaviors.
And yet the two high-profile institutions that infamously exemplify the “brother” relationship in our state – Michigan State University and the University of Michigan – are sullied in the eyes of the world after a disgraceful post-game incident Saturday in Ann Arbor.
The Michigan Wolverines handily won the football game, and as most of the team was celebrating on the field with the Paul Bunyan Trophy, two of their teammates were getting mob-stomped by a large contingent of MSU Spartans in the tunnel to the locker rooms.
Video from the incident doesn’t show a scuffle – it shows a shocking assault, including some players who swung their helmets as weapons and others punching and kicking the victims. When did a game played by kids turn personal and vengeful, to be settled off the field with violence?
What the hell have we come to?
Good-natured fun has drained from this rivalry for years. Some point to the infamous “little brother” dis of MSU by former Michigan running back Mike Hart in 2007 as the ignition point for a change in tone.
That was Mark Dantonio’s first season as MSU’s head football coach. Did he laugh it off, or ignore it? Quoth the coach at the time:
“They want to mock us? I’m telling them it’s not over. … It will never be over here. It’s just starting. Just remember, pride comes before the fall.”
He was not smiling when he said that. Dantonio and the Spartans went on to win eight of the next 12 games against their archrival, and rarely did the combatants or their coaches crack a smile or concede an inch to their opponent. It just seemed to grow more like Dantonio’s demeanor – dour and humorless.
“It’s a rivalry that I think has gotten a lot more heated and a lot more toxic in the last four or five years,” said Kyle Austin, an MLive Spartans reporter who was in the tunnel Saturday night and witnessed the violence. “It was just kind of a perfect storm for this to happen.”
Before you write and tell me I’m selectively picking on MSU, go back and read this column I wrote in February, when UM basketball coach Juwan Howard smacked an opposing coach in a postgame handshake line. The loss of perspective and sportsmanship is happening all over the sporting world.
UM is not blameless in Saturday’s mayhem. As an older brother, I know a thing or two about antagonism – and when it’s wise not to apply it. Given the tensions between the teams, why did two Wolverines run into the tunnel when it was full of defeated Spartans?
And before UM head coach Jim Harbaugh sets up camp on the moral high ground, he might want to keep one of his star players from taunting MSU head coach Mel Tucker by name (“I thought Tuck was comin’”) after the game. I mean, after the fight after the game. While Harbaugh has expressed outrage and called for criminal charges against MSU players, he has not publicly addressed his players’ behavior or roles in the incident.
Harbaugh also is legendary for his tepid and insincere postgame handshakes with other coaches. He and Tucker barely grazed one another after Saturday’s game.
Coaches like to use terms like “student-athletes” and talk of molding boys into men. Well, culture starts at the top, Mel and Jim. Even in the most brutal of sports – mixed martial arts fighting – the bloodied combatants often share respectful hugs after their bouts.
Part of this dynamic may be the crazy money that has flowed to college football in recent years – to celebrity coaches, and increasingly to athletes themselves. The stakes are much higher than a goofy lumberjack trophy: After Tucker beat Michigan in his first two years, he got a $95 million contract; Harbaugh last year got a pay cut in part due to his failures against MSU and Ohio State.
And part of the problem may be the larger fishbowl of anger and hostility this whole country is swimming in, from cultural issues to politics. The day before the UM-MSU game, Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was beaten by a hammer-wielding man who broke into their home. The violence followed increasingly strident rhetoric on the suspect’s blog.
Ideas and words have consequences; hatred and antagonism can fester into violence. Who knew?
We all did, that’s who. We’ve been watching it unfold and watching as those charged with setting a better example instead choose the low road. Unfortunately, too many people follow.
Whatever the root cause, I have a message for Harbaugh and Tucker from the kind of fan who can ride out a loss and have their life go on the next day: We’d like our fun back.
Let’s hope the last of it didn’t get stomped out in that tunnel at Michigan Stadium.
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John Hiner is the vice president of content for MLive Media Group. If you have questions you’d like him to answer, or topics to explore, share your thoughts at editor@mlive.com.
