DotComp: The adults in the room saw this coming
Ann Arbor, Mich. - I don’t know what happened from the time Michigan defensive back Ja’Den McBurrows was seen skipping into the tunnel after the game and the time when he was the target of pushes, punches and maybe even a kick as he was being thrown out of a doorway near the Michigan State locker room following Michigan’s 29-7 victory over Michigan State, Saturday night.
I can’t think of anything McBurrows could have said that would have deserved the punches and thuds that he took. I feel bad for him because he made the mistake of entering the tunnel without many teammates around him, and he made the second mistake of doing what Michigan players are known to do in that tunnel, and that’s gloat, taunt, provoke and disrespect.
We’ve seen Michigan State win this game 10 times in the last 15 years. All 10 times, Michigan State players rush to their own sideline to celebrate with teammates, grab the Paul Bunyan trophy and whoop it up with the band, fans and family.
The last two times we’ve seen Michigan win this game, they have turned their initial attention toward disrespecting the opponent.
This time, when the game ended, Michigan’s entire team ran to mid-field. Some celebrated amongst themselves. Most of them turned toward the Spartans and shouted, postured and taunted.
That’s just strange.
But that’s Harbaugh’s Michigan.
This has been brewing for several years. After the red rover storm trooper incident in 2018, and then Michigan’s mocking of Michigan State players on social media after the 2019 game, and incidents such as Mike Morris choking Kenneth Walker at the bottom of a pile late in last year’s game, there comes a time when Michigan State players just get sick of it. They showed great restraint after the game when Michigan, as a team, taunted the Spartans and seemed to try to bait them into an incident. But not all of the Spartans showed enough restraint for long enough, and they were very wrong in an ugly way.
Mel Tucker teaches the Nick Saban philosophy of trash talk: Don’t do it. I’m sure there are times when his players can’t help themselves, and they lash out a little bit during a game. But it’s rare. And if they’re caught doing it, Tucker will give them a Sabanesque ass chewing.
Michigan players operate with no such leash when they play Michigan State. It’s clear that they are encouraged to jeer and taunt, at least in this game, every year, under Harbaugh. I don’t know how or why Harbaugh adopted this conduct. Bo Schembechler never would have approved of it, or running a reverse pass trick play when up 29-7 with 2:34 remaining.
Two days after Michigan’s victory over Michigan State in 2019, after a weekend of social media taunts by Wolverine players hurled at Spartans, unlike anything I’ve ever seen from players in a major American sport toward a beaten opponent, Michigan quarterback Shea Patterson said in an interview on WJR in Detroit that Michigan players “wanted to make it sting” for Michigan State players.
That’s all fine, well and good. That’s fair. I find it bad for the game, but it’s fair. But also know that it comes from the top. And it’s dangerous.
Patterson wouldn’t have said those things, and his teammates wouldn’t have Tweeted those Tweets, if they didn’t have approval from the top, and there wouldn’t have been Michigan team photographers and videographers on the field for the red rover storm trooper incident in 2018, unless they had approval from the top, from Jim Harbaugh.
The Michigan players wouldn’t have been mocking Michigan State’s players after this game, if that wasn’t the climate and conduct that Harbaugh wants.
After a minute or two of Michigan players jeering the Spartans as they headed toward the tunnel, about three quarters of the Michigan players jogged over to the student section to celebrate. Another couple dozen players remained, tightly pressed near the Michigan State players, continuing to hurl insults. McBurrows was among those players.
It had all of the elements of a potential post-game brawl, except for the fact that Tucker forbids trash talking. That’s why the Michigan State players kept walking. Most of them turned the other cheek. For awhile.
One or two Michigan State players turned and looked back at the Michigan players angrily, and pointed a finger or two. Michigan defensive lineman Rayshaun Benny, who once upon a time was a Michigan State commitment but changed his mind and pledged to Michigan on signing day, had to be restrained by teammates.
McBurrows left his teammates and trotted ahead of many Michigan State players and into the tunnel. James Franklin’s favorite tunnel.
I turned to SpartanMag Associated Editor Paul Konyndyk as I watched this and said, “What are they doing? They look like they’re trying to start something. They don’t want to go celebrate with their teammates?”
No, they don’t. That’s not what they’re taught. That’s not what’s valued at Michigan, in this rivalry, these days. What’s valued, in the Michigan football building, is trying to “make it sting” when they play Michigan State.
McBurrows is a sophomore. It was his first time beating Michigan State. He probably didn’t know that players usually receive the Paul Bunyan Trophy on the field after this game and have some fun with it.
Video shows McBurrows bounding into the tunnel with glee, around those Michigan State players who had been taunted by his teammates.
I don’t know what he did after that. And whatever it was, the Michigan State players should have ignored it and gone to their locker room and dealt with their defeat by themselves.
Instead, you saw the fracas that erupted. The Michigan State players involved should be punished. Zion Young, Angelo Grose and Itayvion Brown, among others, probably shouldn’t play another down for Michigan State this season. I can’t think of any other video or circumstances that could arise that would absolve them. It was a sickening reaction.
And Harbaugh will lap up the public relations victory, playing the victim, playing the angel. What he needs to realize is he’s fostering this climate.
For the past three years, I’ve been saying that the Michigan vs. Michigan State rivalry was close to igniting the type of brawl that we saw at Clemson vs South Carolina game in 2004. That full-fledged, full-field fight was one of the worst moments in recent college football history. It made the Clemson-South Carolina rivalry look terrible. It made college football look terrible. I feared that the Michigan State-Michigan rivalry was headed down a similar path. I didn’t want that type of ugliness to stain this annual football holiday that we have enjoyed for so long.
I have told Konyndyk in the past, and mentioned on my podcast, that if the adults in the room didn’t rise up and take control of this rivalry, and change its course back toward one of decent, begrudging respect, then we as observers of the Michigan State vs Michigan rivalry would suffer the shock of watching what happened to Clemson-South Carolina come home to roost on our rivalry.
Mel Tucker is one such adult. Jim Harbaugh is not. He allowed this problem to fester, and it boiled further at midfield after this game. And then one of his players, McBurrows, carried out the Harbaugh doctrine too far, too long, and got caught all by himself.
Michigan and Michigan State players have hated each other for more than a century. But only recently has it turned this ugly. Harbaugh fanned the flames of this fire which burned out of control on Saturday. Not Tucker, not Mark Dantonio, not Will Gholston, not Lloyd Carr, not Brady Hoke. Jim Harbaugh’s condoning, championing and sponsoring of a “make it sting” attitude toward this rivalry caused the ripple effects that ended with McBurrows being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, presumably saying all the things that Harbaugh would want a victorious Michigan player to say when in the company of a beaten Spartan.
Harbaugh says he has a player with a broken nose due to this incident. That’s shameful. The guilty Michigan State players are a disgrace to the game. I’m not sure they should wear the Michigan State uniform again.
I feel bad for McBurrows, that it happened to him. But Harbaugh should feel worse. He could have stemmed the tide of this tsunami, but he encouraged the waves.
He’s the adult. He’s the leader. He failed.