Get SpartanMag FREE 30-DAY TRIAL, use Promo Code: Green2018:

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State sports fans who may have been concerned about the university hiring a new president who was apathetic or even antagonistic toward major college athletics breathed a satisfied sigh of relief on Tuesday.

The selection of Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. to become Michigan State’s 21st president seemed to check all the proper boxes, including those pertaining to Spartan sports.

Finding a sports-friendly president wasn’t a high priority for the university, nor should it have been - but it sure is a fine fringe benefit. Board members were wise to spot a keeper in Stanley, who happens to be strong in understanding the importance of athletics as a front porch to the university.

That front porch was stained and damaged in recent years by the Dr. Larry Nassar tragedy, which was largely a failure on behalf of MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine and its corrupt dean, and to a lesser extent the athletics department and its former women’s gymnastics coach.

Michigan State is still learning from the Nassar tragedy. Stanley said on Tuesday that he wants to meet with survivors, listen to them, learn from them. He’ll begin that task, and others, when he takes office on Aug. 1.

He’s saying all the right things, and it seemed to come naturally - which is refreshing. He came off as a genuine, concerned administrator, not a stuffed shirt acting out a role.

Stanley, and is wife, Ellen Li, M.D., Ph.D., will live on campus, at Cowles House, once its renovations are complete. He said he wants to be visible and lead from the front. He seems to have the right type of personality, energy and expertise to do it well.

It’s clear that he has great respect for everything Michigan State has been in the past. He is believable when voicing his quest to build a great, safe future for Michigan State.

I didn’t have much confidence that Michigan State’s vast search committee and its new Board of Trustees would find a likable, universally-respected candidate. I feared Michigan State would land on an awkward compromise candidate who spoke like a robot.

When we began hearing whispers through the ranks of the athletic department on Monday evening that Michigan State had gotten this search right, I had no idea it would be this right.

Sometimes I underestimate Michigan State University’s ability to attract the best. But Stanley seems like a five-star fit to me. He has an air of humility which goes well with the land grant mission.

Stanley didn’t act as if Michigan State is lucky to have him, but my first impression is that Michigan State is indeed fortunate. Michigan State didn’t just hire a resumé, it hired a person.

But the resumé is kind of amazing:

* Attended the University of Chicago, then gained a medical degree from Harvard.

* Became a professor in the Department of Medicine and Molecular Biology at Washington University in St. Louis.

* Became an esteemed biomedical researcher and an expert in infectious diseases.

* Appointed vice chancellor for research at Washington University.

* Appointed in 2009, president of Stony Brook University.

In terms of mind-blowing brainy stuff, he was a member of the National Institute of Health Director's Blue Ribbon Panel on the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. That’s one of many such boards he has been a part of, or chaired.

He’s been a champion for inclusion, diversity and has fought for better funding for disadvantaged students.

Fund-raising: During Stanley's tenure, Stony Brook received the sixth-largest donation to a public university ever recorded - a gift of $150 million from billionaire philanthropists Jim and Marilyn Simons and the Simons Foundation in 2011.

If you’re not familiar with Stony Brook, an America East Conference press release described the 26,000-student university located on Long Island, N.Y. as “one of the nation's most prestigious research institutions. One of just 62 members of the invitation-only Association of American Universities, Stony Brook is recognized for its innovative programs, groundbreaking discoveries and integration of research with undergraduate education.”

This is the part about the new president that seemed too good to be true, if you wanted a president who understands sports:

Dr. Stanley was selected to represent the America East Conference on the NCAA Division I Board of Directors by America East Conference universities.

In athletics, Stony Brook is a member of the America East Conference.

His peers at fellow America East Conference schools such as Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, UMass-Lowell and Maryland-Baltimore County saw him as a guy who understands athletics, and gets things done.

“He (Stanley) is an innovative educator and leader who believes in the role college athletics plays on a college campus,” America East Commissioner Amy Huchthausen said in 2015.

A smart, supportive president can be so important to an athletic department, to a college football team or basketball team. I didn’t understand the connection back in the late 1980s when I began covering Michigan State as a college student. But I remember hearing coaches talk about the importance of having the administration, the athletic director, and the major coaches pulling in the same direction.

Why wouldn’t they pull in the same direction? How hard is it to achieve cooperation?

Well, it’s been plenty hard at Michigan State, at times.

Michigan State lacked harmony after 1987, when George Perles and President John DiBiaggio began sparring. Then DiBiaggio, on his way out the door, left Perles with a crap sandwich athletic director in Merrily Dean Baker.

DiBiaggio’s successor, Peter McPherson, didn’t play well with Perles, and soon fired him. McPherson hired Nick Saban, and all seemed well, until people realized Saban wanted to be at a school where he could wield more power than the university president - something that should never happen at any self-respecting institution.

Now, Saban is the best college football coach in the country, and perhaps the best in history, but he didn’t completely fit at Michigan State, where the tail isn’t welcomed to wag the dog. He’s a great coach and a terrific jackass, but he didn’t produce at Michigan State like Mark Dantonio has. And Dantonio, for the record, plays well with others.

Dantonio will play well with Stanley. You can see it. They’re intelligent, respectful. They’ll mesh. They’ll pull in the same direction.

Stanley and Tom Izzo? Stanley didn’t mention the coach by name, but gave this endorsement:

“One of the things that was very exciting for my wife … she is a huge basketball fan,” Stanley said, “and her excitement about becoming part of Spartan athletics and Spartan basketball was really palpable.”

It’s clear to me that Stanley will support Michigan State coaches, and understand the importance of their role. That’s a great first step.

“First of all, of course, everybody knows Michigan State athletics,” Stanley said during Tuesday’s press conference when asked about the role of sports at a university. “The Spartans are known around the world.”

Respect. That’s what keeps coaches from fleeing to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“I think college athletics are incredibly important and I think for Michigan State, athletics are really a portal by which the world sees you,” Stanley said. “So it really is a way to build name recognition. It helps cement your relationship with your alumni, it helps make you an integral part of the community. It builds the kind of partnership, something everybody can talk about, and cuts across socio-economic areas. People will follow the Spartans and will be loyal to the Spartans and all of those things vanish away.

“Athletics is incredibly important. It means a lot to the university. The student-athletes are incredibly important.”

When he chaired the America East Board of Presidents, and during his time on the NCAA Board of Directors, Stanley said his focus was on the student-athletes.

"And what I came to experience from having done those things was a tremendous set of respect for student-athletes, how they learn to manage time, how they develop leadership potential, and the difference they can make to community,” he said. “They really are leaders on campus."

That's a very Mark Hollis outlook on college athletes.

"I see these very positive things about athletics," Stanley said. "I also see the challenges and am aware of some of the things that have been in public and so on, but I think in general I'm very bullish on what's going to be done and I look forward to working with our athletics director and understanding what the public's thoughts are about athletics."

Board of Trustees Chair Diane Byrum was asked if athletics was a vital part of search committee's process.

"I will say it was a piece," Byrum said, "but it wasn't at the top of our list of qualities and characteristics. We didn't seek a presidential candidate that had a stellar record in athletics. In my mind, it was a bonus because he had the experience of being on the NCAA Board of Directors, but it was really the student wellness piece that resonated the most with the search committee."

Student wellness. That gets back to the Nassar tragedy. Stanley touched on it during his initial address on Tuesday after the Board unanimously voted to approve him as MSU’s next president.

“There is much, much more that I need to learn about Michigan State but I’m so excited about the trajectory that you’re on and I look forward to being a part of that journey,” he said. “At the same time, I also see a Spartan community that has had a turbulent and difficult time, a community in need of healing. I want to meet with the survivors and their families, listen to their voices and their thoughts and learn from them. I want to work with them, and all of the campus community, to ensure the changes that need to be made will be implemented.

“What happened at MSU will not be forgotten. Instead it will drive us every day to work together to build a campus culture of transparency, awareness, sensitivity, respect and prevention - a safe campus for all. This is going to be key for all of our initiatives.”

Michigan State has had presidents in the past that I never cared if I met them or not. But this is a guy I’d like to meet. I’d like to ask him about Stony Brook’s College World Series baseball team of 2012, which went 52-15, upset LSU in the Super Regionals in Baton Rouge, and how Stony Brook has hung onto that baseball coach for 22 years.

I would ask him about Stony Brook’s football coach, who has won four conference titles and taken the team to the FCS Playoffs four times, sandwiched around four lean seasons of .500 football.

I would like to ask him about the support he gave to former Stony Brook basketball coach Steve Pikiell when he started 4-24, but inched his way toward three NIT appearances, two CBI appearances and then an NCAA Tournament bid in 2016 before leaving to become head coach at Rutgers. Izzo has probably already called Pikiell about Stanley. I’ll bet Izzo heard good things.

They called him Sam Stanley in the America East press releases. He seems like a guy you could have a beer and burger with at Crunchy’s. But he’s also, you know, wicked smart.

“I would only add that on top of the stellar record, the experience, the background, he is a genuine, nice person,” Byrum said.

Some places are too stuffy to let guys like this sink their hands in the clay and make an impact. But Stanley, a 65-year-old native of Seattle, is a research genius who has public school and land grant written all over him.

How important is a university president in forging a future? Consider the past. Michigan State would not have been invited to join the Big Ten, and wouldn’t have become a university in the early 1950s, were it not for President John Hannah’s resolve to use athletics to help build the college’s brand and momentum.

Other Michigan State presidents have followed in Hannah’s tradition, including Lou Anna K. Simon. Simon was so good in so many areas, but proved to be inflexible and impersonal in the face of a human crisis on her campus.

Now, Stanley is set to enter, espousing many of the ideals that Hannah once forwarded. He inherits leadership of a damaged but recovering university. He wants to hit a grand slam on this mission of taking Michigan State to new heights, as he did at Stony Brook. And I think he will pull athletics right along with him.