On Saturday, things got a bit heated when the Michigan State team came out onto the field 10 minutes late and proceeded to lock arms and march straight through some of the Michigan players who were warming up near midfield. The move resulted in multiple Spartans’ players ‘clotheslining’ a couple of Wolverines’ players and even ripping out the earphones from on player’s ears.
The debacle resulted in upsetting the Michigan players, including Devin Bush Jr., who took it upon himself to begin tearing up the Spartans’ logo at midfield with his cleats.
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Following the game, which Michigan won 21-7, Jim Harbaugh called the move to march through his players, “bush league” and accused Spartans’ head coach Mark Dantonio of smiling while it was all going down.
Dantonio called Harbaugh’s comments “BS” and refused to go into detail. He then doubled down on Sunday when he was again asked about the situation.
On Monday, Harbaugh was again asked about what happened and about coach Dantonio’s claim that it was “BS.” To say Harbaugh was not thrilled would be an understatement.
Jim Harbaugh pulled out a piece of paper to quote Mark Dantonio today.
"I'll go one step further and use Coach Dantonio's words from a few years back. 'It's not a product of the team, but their program.'" pic.twitter.com/2px64V2dPV
— Brad Galli (@BradGalli) October 22, 2018
From Detroit News:
“It’s a thing that the two athletic directors really need to talk about because leading up to the game we were aware that they did a traditional walk and we contacted them because they send us a book of pre-game operations that is the most detailed, finest I’ve ever seen,” Harbaugh said.
“It has everything in it in writing, but that part is not, and we call them and say, ‘What time are you guys doing your walk,’ because we don’t want to put our players out to warmup until after you guys do your traditional walk. They gave us a time that it would be at 9:45. OK, great. (Then), ‘Well, it might be 9:55.’ Now it is going to be 9:55 a day later. That walk happened another 10 minutes after that. At no point was there any kind of heads up or ‘Hey, could you guys please leave the field?’
“I see where they’re using the word juvenile. I think that’s trying to brush it under the carpet because their strength coaches were out there leading it. Their assistant coaches were out there. Coach Dantonio was right behind it. That had all the ear-markings and evidence of an orchestrated stormtrooper march.”
BONUS CONTENT:
Dear Spartans: You wanted Michigan to take you seriously, now you have to deal with it
For the past decade, Michigan State has pretty much dominated Michigan when it comes to football, there is no arguing that.
Heading into Saturday, the Spartans had beaten the Wolverines in eight of the previous ten matchups and covered the point spread in all 10 of those games. To say the rivalry was one-sided would be an understatement.
But for the Spartans and their fans, it was never good enough.
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