SULLIVAN ON STATE:  Cultural Divide? Absolutely

It was an ugly mess and there isn’t any avoiding the fact that the Spartan football players who fell into the trap and engaged in awful, terrible behavior three months ago earned swift and suitable punishment.

That swift and suitable punishment came less than 24 hours after a fight, which maybe lasted 30 seconds, occurred inside the University of Michigan’s tunnel at their campus facility which is, apparently, beyond reproach.

As the videos surfaced, the standard explosion of reaction fueled a narrative that had already been established by the hosts for that night’s game.

An age-old playbook was dusted off and applied as the host school’s head coach – hardly a man known for taking a methodical approach to adult leadership – poured a gigantic bucket of gasoline on the embers.

That host school’s head football coach was quickly accompanied by his boss – a man with whom the head coach had played football at the school.  And, as it turns out, the football coach had been treating this boss the way a fraternity elder statesman treats a pledge.  The two hadn’t spoken for months when this moment arrived. But they were in lockstep with the playbook on this night.

Minutes after the skirmish, the host head coach fumed and spoke with the certainty of a carnival barker, demanding that criminal charges be levied – with no regard for what his words might do in terms of legal tampering. And why should he be worried about that? He had a kangaroo court prosecutor in his khaki pocket. 

The host’s head football coach tried to play the role of a wronged, angelic lamb, a week after a visiting head coach warned that if negligence of that tunnel’s dynamic persisted, something dangerous was bound to happen.

The response of the host head coach a week earlier?

He dismissed the warnings of the visiting coach, calling him a “whiner” and saying he had “bigger fish to fry.”

This didn’t come as any sort of surprise to those of us who know that the foundational ethos over there has always felt akin to a Marge Schott type of culture, minus the lipstick.

But, in that moment, defecated by a man who has a career-long history of playing dumb to controversy, the narrative was cemented and the host school had, once again, accomplished its mission.

Meanwhile, Mel Tucker, Alan Haller, and the institution for which they work, immediately suspended eight football players and couldn’t have been any clearer about the disappointment in the way the players behaved and how this behavior is simply unacceptable within this community.

This might be where the other people will point out the many incidents, behaviors, problems, and dysfunction that have manifested out of East Lansing for decades.

No need for that – we know about it all.

That’s all been acknowledged since there is a self-awareness about our own house’s elements of dysfunction.

Every house has messes – and the one down the street never has been willing to consider that sanctimonious words to a fight song don’t magically eliminate messes and wretched wrongdoing.

Back to the moment when the host head coach fumed, rambled, and spoke of how “egregious” the actions were on the part of the visitors.

EGREGIOUS

This man stood there condemning and incriminating Michigan State players while knowing he had been playing a team captain for weeks who was facing felony charges for illegal gun possession that went along with driving approximately 56 miles per hour in a 25-mile-an-hour residential neighborhood in a car full of enough bullets to assist the Ukrainian army.

If you think this properly illustrates institutional, sanctimonious hypocrisy, settle in because this is just the start.

SETTLE IN …

Everyone knows that sanctimonious hypocrisy is rampant at UMAA and that this has been the case for more than a century.

That is everyone except members of said institution which apparently has a zero tolerance policy on mirrors, lest anyone be tempted to look directly into one over there.

Many Spartans were frustrated by the lack of comments from Michigan State’s leaders as the nation and media piled on, thanks to the actions of the Spartans but sent ablaze by the host head coach’s bucket of gasoline.

Columnists, blabber mouths, social media veterans, parochial talk radio simpletons who buy time on the radio in order to drive propaganda, and national journalists who wave their Maize and Blue pennants during the good times, were breathlessly racing to condemn the players, the leadership, the institution, and, yes, the culture in East Lansing.

While Spartans had a fair reason to want Green and White leaders to “stand up and fight” against the typical and generations-long playbook being expertly executed by the sanctimonious hypocrites and their apologists, the benefit of time allows us to now examine how and where the true leadership was demonstrated.

And the benefit of time now allows us to, indeed, examine the issue so many were lazily jumping to examine – culture.

CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE

First, a word about football.

The University of Michigan played a good game on the night of Oct. 29, 2022.

The University of Michigan has earned credit for its best two-year stretch of football in the modern era of the game and the head coach has earned the praise he’s received for winning games, earning two straight Big Ten Championships, and two straight appearances in the College Football Playoff.

If he wins another Big Ten Championship, he will equal Mark Dantonio, who won three Big Ten Championships and began what is currently a 10-5 edge for Michigan State in the rivalry over the last 15 seasons.

The respect for the football accomplishments we have here is logical, necessary, and genuine.

Michigan State stumbled to a disappointing record of 5-7 a year after an 11-2 record which was capped off by a win in a New Year’s Six Bowl and a Top 10 finish.

We know this and we’ll sit back and take all well-considered critiques about the results of Michigan State’s 2022 season.

Believe us when we say this – we are acutely aware of the disappointment of last season.

Believe us when we say this – nobody is more disappointed in the 2022 season than the players, staff, and head coach at Michigan State.

But since the masses from the institution that hosted that game on Oct. 29 were so immediately adamant about denigrating Michigan State’s culture, thanks in large part to the immediate gasoline-pour executed by their head coach, let’s go ahead and dig in on an examination of culture.

And since everyone knows about all the challenges Michigan State has faced, addressed, worked through, and, in so many cases, overcome over the decades, for a change, we’re going to take a close look at the culture of the institution that has denigrated Michigan State’s culture… forever.

CULTURE ESTABLISHMENT BEGINS AT THE BEGINNING 

While nobody over there wants to accept this, we’ll start with the untouchable Fielding H. Yost, who has posthumously walked on water for generations.

Here is a direct quote from a committee that the University of Michigan formed in 2021 when, in a very rare moment of self-awareness, there was consideration for the removal of Yost’s name from an old campus field house, which is the current home of the UMAA hockey team and where my father played basketball as a member of the University of Michigan’s basketball team in the 1950s: 

“Even at that time, Yost’s racist beliefs were known; Yost’s racist policies were enacted,” reads one passage in the committee’s final six-page report. “In naming the Field House after Yost, the University chose to place one man’s contributions to football and to athletics above the profoundly deep and negative impact he had on people of color.”

That’s culture.

More on Yost?

The report also mentioned Yost’s “record of upholding the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to help draw a color line with football at Michigan,” pointing out that only one black athlete (Willis Ward) lettered in football at Michigan between 1901 to 1932. Ward, of Detroit, was later held out of a game in 1934 by Yost, who served as UMAA’s athletic director at the time, following a protest from Georgia Tech, a school that was reluctant to play Michigan with a black player on the field. Yost agreed to Georgia Tech’s racist request and barred Ward from Michigan Stadium that day.

Ward was among the best players on that team, alongside Gerald Ford.

Ward was poised to compete as a track star in the 1936 Olympics, where he was expected to challenge for the gold. In fact, he had beaten Jesse Owens in head-to-head events on several occasions as a collegian. But Ward’s enthusiasm for sports were never the same after Yost’s racist decision in 1934, and Ward soon quit sports altogether. 

“While we acknowledge that Yost had both successes and failures in his career, our historical analysis suggests to us that the benching of Ward was not an aberration but rather epitomized a long series of actions that worked against the integration of sports on campus,” the committee’s report from June of 2021 reads. “When the Regents declared in 1870 that the University was open to ‘any person who possesses the requisite literary and moral qualifications,’ they meant to remove all barriers to admission based on non-academic background factors and so set a very high aspiration for the institution.

“The University has not always met this aspiration, but in our time, it has firmly and decisively rejected in principle the racist value system of Yost’s time. Part of this rejection must include historical reckoning. This is hard and controversial work. But without this reckoning the path forward is obscured.”

This self-anointed church of morality has created committees and written reports about what was then and will forever be undeniable racism demonstrated consistently by an institutional icon who has been wrongly deified.

If the committees and reports don’t actually do anything other than make observations that are obvious without holding racists and systemic racism accountable, the committees and reports are meaningless.

And that is culture.

The university, in writing, officially gave Yost a pass. The university is blaming the value system of Yost’s “time,” and not Yost himself. 

Should we be surprised?

They would never blame a person at Michigan who has won football games, a person who was retroactively awarded with six so-called national championships. Not even 120 years later. Not Fielding H. Yost, whose father fought for the Confederacy, and whose Hillbilly pronunciation of “Meeechigan” was echoed and glorified by everyone from Bob Ufer to the unknowing Rece Davis. 

When Michigan fans hear Davis on ESPN refer to their school as “Meeechigan” with intentions of reverence, they need to know it’s a drawl derived from hillbilly racism, even if Davis has no idea about the background of Yost’s pronunciation. 

Somewhere, Marge Schott is giggling. 

DUFFY DAUGHERTY – COUNTER-CULTURE OF THE HIGHEST ORDER

Perhaps now is the moment to mention the following –

There is a major project currently in development within Michigan State University to finally and properly pay tribute to the man who fully and completely integrated college football by bringing large numbers of Black student-athletes to Michigan State for the purposes of being students, being members of the football team, and, hell yes, winning championships.

A statue will soon live on the nation’s most beautiful campus, adjacent to the north end zone of Spartan Stadium, and it will represent Duffy Daugherty and the Black student-athletes whom he brought to East Lansing where their lives, Michigan State’s proud heritage, and the sport of college football were forever changed for the better.

Daugherty has not received the credit he deserves on this issue because, over the years, guilty consciences in places like Tuscaloosa and Los Angeles have tried to rewrite their histories and steal the narrative.

Michigan State is in the process of fixing that once and for all.

That’s culture.

While on the general topic of statues…

The statue of Duffy Daugherty will be transcendent because it goes far beyond accomplishments on the football field.

The tribute to Daugherty will honor the man he was and the contributions he made not only to Michigan State but also to America.

PUT A MIRROR IN FRONT OF YOUR STATUE

Over there in Ann Arbor where the self-important dog whistling about “culture” rang anew on the night of  Oct. 29, there is a statue of a man, and a campus building bearing the name of the same man, who enabled a sexual predator to damage the lives of hundreds of young student-athletes for decades.

I could, of course, go on about that entire topic but we’ll just leave it there, since we know we aren’t in any position to denigrate anyone when it comes to similarly horrific scenarios – however, there are no statues on Michigan State’s campus representing the “leaders” that literally allowed our existential tragedy to occur.

Go ahead and compare the two scenarios all you want.

One fully accepted the failures and has worked tirelessly to address those failures in the spirit of strengthening the very DNA of the institution.

The other has a statue of the man for whom the sexual predator worked and by whom he was enabled – for decades.

That’s Michigan culture.

Before we move past the true greatness of Duffy Daugherty…

“A TIE IS LIKE KISSING YOUR SISTER”… BUT, APPARENTLY, NOT ALWAYS

In 1966, Duffy and his good pal Ara Parseghian waged a battle that lives on to this day.

It was one of the very first games that was labeled – for good reason – The Game of the Century.

Michigan State and our friends from South Bend – who helped Biggie Munn and his burgeoning football program earn credibility decades earlier with genuine assistance by agreeing to put Michigan State on the Notre Dame schedule every year – gave the nation a thrill with a bone-crushing demonstration of toughness on a raw, gray Midwestern afternoon.

Final score?

10-10.

The two coaches shook hands and even exchanged a chuckle with one another at the thought of ending that war without a winner.

Most sports fans don’t even know that the phrase “A tie is like kissing your sister…” was born that day and it came naturally out of the mouth of Duffy in his immediate reaction to the disappointment when addressing the media.

There were (and maybe still are) many who unfairly criticized Ara for “going for the tie” on his final possession, but that was actually the smart thing to do and Duffy never held any resentment.

At stake in that moment – the National Championship.

It remains a bit of a debate to this day – is it a shared National Championship?  

Does Notre Dame deserve the full claim to the crown?  

It was a tie, so shouldn’t Michigan State have every right to fly a National Championship flag for the 1966 season?

Those questions won’t ever be satisfactorily answered, but they’re fun to discuss at The Peanut Barrel.

It remains a moment that both schools share in celebrating, and Duffy’s instinctive handling of the outcome conjures up that word once again – culture.

Seven years after that gridiron war, the annual solemnity of the rite-of-passage-ritual between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University ended exactly as that 1966 game ended in East Lansing.

The Ann Arbor Statue Man and his rival, Woody Hayes, ended their 1973 battle to go the Rose Bowl in a 10-10 tie.

This sent the conference – or, more to the point, the institution that has forever lived with a sense of entitlement relative to everything – into a tizzy.

Who goes to the Rose Bowl?

It went to a vote among the Big Ten athletic directors – and Ohio State was chosen to represent the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl.

For reasons that remain unaddressed, The Ann Arbor Statue Man threw a childish tantrum on television, stomping and yelling about how his team deserved the Rose Bowl, how his team outplayed Ohio State, how it was the single worst experience of his life (which raises questions about his life), and, best of all, how he held the “sister school” responsible for pushing the vote Ohio State’s way.

Ann Arbor’s Statue Man was insinuating that it was Michigan State’s obligation to acquiesce to him and his program.

To this day, his angry hubris is laughable.

UMAA missed two field goals in that game and, perhaps slightly relevant, the inability to score more points than the opponent remains an inconvenient fact for those who still whine about the tie and the vote.

Ohio State and Michigan each ended the season unbeaten and once-tied. Ohio State went into the game ranked No. 1 in the nation. Ohio State played the game on the road. 

Michigan can believe its team should have been selected for the Rose Bowl, but tell us why Ohio State did not deserve it.

You can’t. 

Crying and whining about that vote is based on nothing but Michigan’s comical sense of entitlement.

Michigan is the only program in the history of football to be outraged that it wasn’t granted the winner’s spoils for a tie. 

The players on that UMAA team still whine about it.

Why?

When their leader stomped and yelled and blamed the “sister school,” and whined like a spoiled child, it strengthened the tone of entitlement and re-established what is acceptable and expected within that scenario and countless others at that institution and within their community. They are forever the victims vanquished. 

Best way to earn a championship and not leave anything to chance – win the game.

Instead – it was an instinctive demonstration of whining, yelling, crying, stomping feet, blaming the “sister school,” and doing everything other than accepting the result and saying what any football coach worth his whistle would say, “It’s a disappointment – but we should have just taken care of business and won the game.”

That is culture.

And the Ann Arbor Statue Man isn’t worth his whistle.

NO GAME IS EVER WON OR LOST ON A SINGLE PLAY

Moving on…

To this very day, they insist that he was tripped and that pass interference should have been called.

Was it pass interference?

Maybe.

Maybe not – that’s a fair debate.

However.

The ball was right in Desmond Howard’s breadbasket as a glorious Autumn afternoon bled into evening in 1990.

Go back and listen to Keith Jackson’s call of the play in real time – the same way the officials watched the play unfold.

Jackson says, “He dropped it!!!” about 38 times.

Okay – let’s assume a flag should have been thrown.

Why is it that nobody has ever bothered to note that pass interference in the end zone on a two-point conversion attempt does not automatically award the offense with the two points?

UMAA would have had to take another shot at it.

These are fun debates to have within the context of this chapter of a never-ending story.

Here’s what is not up for debate when thinking about the result of that football game in 1990 that they still whine about (taken directly from the University of Michigan Football game-by-game archives of box scores):

First downs – 

• Michigan State – 24

• UMAA – 22

3rd Down Completion Percentage –

• Michigan State – 8 out of 15, 53.3%

• UMAA – 5 out of 12, 41.6%

Rushing –

• Michigan State – 52 rushes for 236 yards

• UMAA – 36 rushes for 191 yards

Feel free to go back and review that last one again.

Punts –

• Michigan State – 5 for an average of 45.8 yards

• UMAA – 4 for an average of 34.3 yards

Field Goals –

• Michigan State – 0 for 0

• UMAA – 0 for 1, missed a chip shot at the end of the first half

Time of Possession –

• Michigan State – 34:46

• UMAA – 25:14

Something that does not show up in the box score –

Midway through the first half, UMAA had first-and-goal from the 3-yard line.

On fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line, Michigan State stuffed a run and UMAA was held scoreless on that drive by the Spartan defense.

Gary Moeller – frankly, a victim himself of the sanctimonious hypocrisy – deserved and still deserves credit for going for it on fourth down in that moment.

Why have the victims vanquished assumed for 33 years that, if a flag had been thrown, Michigan would have gained a yard and a half and converted the 2-point conversion if a flag had been thrown when they couldn’t move three yards in four plays earlier in the game? 

The same reason they assumed the vote should have gone their way in 1973. 

But that doesn’t change the fact that Michigan State held on defense on fourth-and-goal at the 1-yard line earlier in the game.

However – all anyone from over there will talk about (including Desmond Howard himself) is that the damn refs missed the pass interference.

Those damn refs.

Similar to the 1973 result against Ohio State – go ahead and whine all you want about a single play that didn’t even actually finalize the result of the game.

You lost.

You got absolutely manhandled on the ground all afternoon in your home stadium as the No. 1 team in the country – by the tougher team.

You’re still whining about it.

That’s culture.

HE STRUCK AN OPPOSING COACH IN THE FACE

As UMAA’s head football coach, and his athletic director pledge, were going on and on about how criminal charges must be levied on the Spartans who engaged in the scuffle inside the tunnel on the night of Oct. 29, where was Juwan Howard, UMAA’s head basketball coach?

Let’s go ahead and forget for the moment that this man is responsible (along with many others) for one of the more egregious scandals in the history of college sports.

Yet, UMAA found it suitable and properly representative of the university’s self-enacted position as the keeper of the moral and ethical high ground to hire this man as its head basketball coach.

Not long after threatening to kill a rival coach, he struck an opposing basketball coach in the face immediately after a game that his team lost.

Afterward, his instinct was not to apologize, ask for forgiveness, accept that what he did was abhorrently wrong, and publicly speak directly to everyone associated with his alma mater, and Wisconsin’s, and admit that what he did was about as embarrassing of an act as a head coach could have demonstrated.

Also absent – an apology to the man he struck in the face.

Instead, he made strange dog whistling references to having grown up on Chicago’s South Side.

I grew up on Chicago’s North Shore but that doesn’t change the fact that a 7/11 gumball won’t ever taste like foie gras.

He remains the head coach of the University of Michigan’s basketball team. Similar to his university’s official stance on Yost, Juwan Howard never admitted wrongdoing.

That is culture.

And maybe that’s a nice point from which to shift back to the moment we find ourselves in now.

DID HE HAVE HIS ILLEGALLY-OWNED GUN ON GAME DAY? 

The Spartans who engaged in the dustup inside of the tunnel in the aftermath of the Oct. 29 game were wrong, demonstrated horrible judgment, went against the week-long warnings and wishes of Michigan State’s head coach  (“They’re going to do everything they can to try to get us to crack – stay disciplined and don’t fall for any of it…”), and brought shame to themselves, their families, their teammates, their coaches, and their school.

They were punished – quite severely – by their head coach.

Immediately.

Again, so many Spartans wanted Tucker to let it rip at the podium.

He chose to do something that is difficult for any leader to do – he chose to act swiftly within his own house and shut up while the masses went nuts.

He sacrificed the chances at victories in the name of upholding the integrity of his program’s culture.

His rival had a team captain – in that very moment – playing football for UMAA despite having been pulled over for speeding and then arrested weeks earlier for illegal possession of a Glock 19 (along with one 30-round magazine of bullets, a 24-round magazine of bullets, and a 15-round magazine of bullets). That rival team captain was facing a potential felony charge, unbeknownst to anyone outside of the moral and ethical high ground chamber.

There was zero public notification from the rival head coach or the institution about this until after the Big Ten Championship was won.

Even still, once this crime was made public, no suspension was levied and there wasn’t even any discussion about the incident, other than a press release statement about the player in question being a good kid (which he may very well be).

And when the captain made a big play or two in subsequent games, teammates celebrated by pointing their fingers like a gun with a trigger. 

That’s culture.

THEY HADN’T ANTICIPATED NEEDING TO FIX THE GLITCH

Another of Tucker’s rival’s players had sent out an anti-Semitic Tweet during the season. The first explanation was that the player’s account had been hacked. Then they said there “was a glitch.”

Or something.

No suspension, no explanation.

Hide from the truth, dodge the consequences.

Throw a rock, break a window, hide your hands, say it was someone else. Never apologize. 

Business as usual over there.

We say he’s a good kid – that’s the end of that since we establish these standards.

Our standards are beyond reproach.

That’s culture.

FUELING THE MACHINE’S PROPAGANDA EFFORTS 

A man who is synonymous with UMAA’s propaganda machine wrote a comical essay referencing anonymous sources whining about how, throughout the game on the night of Oct. 29, everyone on Michigan State’s sideline was…..using foul language, encouraging Spartan players to break the legs of the UMAA players, and that the behavior along the sideline was “the worst.”

A day or so after the essay was published, the author appeared on a podcast and walked back most, if not all, of what he wrote, tried to split hairs, acknowledged his loose approach, tried to talk his way out of the kerfuffle, etc.

But his mission was accomplished – he got it out into the conversation and it added to his machine’s playbook approach to driving the narrative, especially when dealing with the efforts to thwart the non-rival rival any time that non-rival rival has the audacity to, if you’ll pardon the expression, stand up and fight for itself.

That’s culture.

I DID NOT LIE – JUST ASK MY MOM OR DAD OR THE GHOST OF MY OLD COACH

Now it’s understood that the NCAA has been investigating UMAA and its head coach for Level I and Level II violations.

Think whatever you may want to think about the NCAA – I don’t like the tax laws we have but they are what they are and I have to follow those laws whether I think it’s fair or not.

UMAA has acknowledged that Level II violations were committed.

However, the man in charge of the football program – and the institution that over two hundred years ago laid claim to the moral and ethical high ground – refuses to acknowledge indications that he may have withheld information or lied to the NCAA when they came calling.

Please remember that Jim Tressel was fired at Ohio State for lying to the NCAA.

Perhaps Ohio State has higher standards than Michigan on items such as this. 

Maybe UMAA’s head coach – who, as a reminder, has earned a reputation over the last 25 years for being a horse’s ass – is smarter than Henry Gondorff and he’s brilliantly threading the needle while playing three-dimensional chess against the dopes at the NCAA.

Or maybe he’s simply saying that the dog ate his homework and believing his own story since he’s been allowed to say and do whatever he’s wanted during his entire time as a “leader” at that place.

And he is being fully supported by his institution.

That’s culture.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE – ALL STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

And as this specific part of the drama was starting to play out, one of the head coach’s top assistants had his home raided by people rumbling out of unmarked law enforcement vehicles as well as his office at the campus football facility bearing the name of the man who enabled a sexual predator right there on that campus for 40 years.

The raids were due to what has been characterized as “computer crimes.”

I don’t know exactly what “computer crimes” are but I think it’s safe to say that nobody ever wants to be facing charges about…… “computer crimes.”

That top assistant has been fired.

Not long ago, a basketball player for UMAA wrecked a car belonging to UMAA’s pledge athletic director and lied to police about a bunch of stuff, including his name.

The player was, indeed, suspended for one game.

How was that accepted as “normal”?

It was normal because that is the culture at UMAA.

The pledge athletic director never spoke in public about that incident, and the threat to public safety that it presented – but he was speedily front and center, bullying the pulpit, when the age-old playbook directed him to aid in attempting to smear the reputation of UMAA’s rival non-rival on the night of Oct. 29. 

There’s also the former ice hockey coach who pressured players to lie about COVID contact tracing and failing to properly address accusations of improper treatment of female employees by his director of hockey operations. Even the ghost of Yost couldn’t help that guy keep his job. 

It’s probably somewhat acceptable to at least listen to someone try to argue that these are a series of isolated incidents that are independent of one another and unfortunate and that everyone makes mistakes, etc.

But it’s equally fair to sit back and assess all of this as……a series of behaviors, problems, violations, negligence, and actions that are, indeed, cultural.

CRIMINAL CHARGES DROPPED HERE, GO TO YOUR ROOM OVER THERE

Meanwhile, it’s becoming clear that the misdemeanor charges levied against the Spartans who engaged in the scuffle inside the tunnel on the night of Oct. 29 are going to be dropped.

The felony charge against one of the Spartans has been reduced.

But these players – kids with families, lives, futures – were unnecessarily forced to jump through a bunch of absolute nonsense, spend money they don’t have, and experience the unjustified over-reaction from a mass of people who come from a world that can be summed up in two words used throughout this examination –

Sanctimonious hypocrisy.

Mark Dantonio was 100 percent right when he said the childish actions of many of UMAA’s bad actors come from the program, from the top down.  

Since we’ve brought him up, we’d be remiss if we didn’t refer to another incident that falls into the category of culture.

If I were Devin Bush’s father, I wouldn’t have cared what any coach, fan, family member, or friend would have said – I would have grabbed my son by the ear and I would have dragged him off the field and told him that not only is he not playing in that day’s game, he’s grounded and has to stay in his bedroom for a month (I’d have told him to figure out a way to take classes online).

His actions that day? (Including having to be restrained from attacking Michigan State sports turf manager Amy Fouty).

Culture.

All of this?

Culture.

INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU AND THE NEED FOR A FULL-LENGTH MIRROR

So, it’s been three months since UMAA defeated Michigan State, 29-7.

Once again – credit to UMAA for the team’s win that night.

The overwhelming and, in fact, ridiculous degree of sanctimonious hypocrisy that has taken place……forever…….has been on renewed display ever since that night.

Inspector Clouseau would easily be able to break this all down – and, for the folks down the street, perhaps that’s what’s warranted.

Meanwhile, I read somewhere that the tunnel is being modified or expanded or something after some sort of internal study regarding something that, of course, had nothing to do with anything and was part of a long, thorough, in-progress study being conducted in conjunction with a collab with NASA, AARP, the Federal Department of the Interior, and Ann Arbor Poets United For Safety (AAPUFS) about various things and so forth.

The news emphasized that the seating capacity in that place won’t be compromised.

Phew.

Interesting.

CULTURAL DIVIDE?  ABSOLUTELY.

Yes, culture was to be examined in the aftermath of the entanglement that occurred inside of UMAA’s tunnel after the game on Oct. 29.

It’s just that everyone’s been focused on the wrong culture.

The culture at Michigan State is strong, healthy, and vibrant.

The leaders in East Lansing are doing what they can to strengthen it, thank you very much.

And, for anyone wondering, mirrors are sold at hardware stores and can even be purchased online these days.

Standing (or even sitting) before them and looking into them?

That’s sort of comparable to Step 2 of any 12-Step Program.

But while those people over there consider these things, here’s some unsolicited advice:

Shut the hell up and take care of your own house.

It’s an absolute mess and the whole world knows it.

In the meantime, the game between Michigan State and UMAA is played every single Autumn.

Dantonio was right – it’ll never be over…

Crowley Sullivan is a 25-year veteran of the sports media industry. He spent 10 years at ESPN where he won two Emmys and a Peabody Award for his work as a Producer on the iconic series “SportsCentury.” As an Executive, he led ESPN Classic and ESPNews Programming and served as an Executive Producer for ESPN Original Entertainment. He also has served as EVP/GM of Campus Insiders, he’s been a USA Today Sports contributor, and he now oversees UFC Fight Pass as its VP/GM. And, he once ate lunch and dinner at The Peanut Barrel for 26 consecutive days/nights.