Michigan State coaches Mark Dantonio and Tom Izzo have come under a ton of heat lately, after ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” targeted them and their respective programs in a report that implied MSU has taken sexual assault lightly, and in some cases covered it up. The report came out Friday, shortly after Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis announced he was stepping down.
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Dantonio and Izzo were both questioned by this on Friday evening in their respective press conferences, and Izzo was questioned again on Sunday after Michigan State’s 74-68 men’s basketball victory over Maryland.
This is not sitting well with former athletic director Merrily Dean Baker, who was very critical of the school’s handling of the situation in a recent interview with the Detroit News. You can read her quotes below:
“The thing I’m feeling now is that I’m concerned the university’s higher-up people wanted to hang Tom and Mark out to dry,” Baker told the Detroit News. “They shouldn’t have been the ones answering (legal) questions. I think there’s a time and a place for them to be held accountable, and I think they should be questioned by a proper investigation. But neither of them should have been forced to be out there answering for the university. It goes back to the language throughout Title IX — that people in charge either knew, or should have known,” she said. “I think the arrogance of the culture set in.”
Baker is not the only one upset about how some of this sexual abuse scandal has been handled, and I’m sure she won’t be the last.
