As the final seconds wound down on the Michigan football team’s win over Michigan State on Saturday, a sight that has become all too familiar for the two rivals occurred once again. During the final kneel down of the game, the two teams began pushing and shoving each other at the line of scrimmage, eventually breaking out into a full-blown scrum at midfield.
This skirmish was the second time in three years that the Wolverines and Spartans ended up in a postgame fight, with the two teams also engaging physically in the Michigan Stadium tunnel after the 2022 edition of the rivalry game. And while junior tight end Colston Loveland seemed to stoke the fire with his words in a postgame on-field interview with FOX, Michigan coach Sherrone Moore immediately informed his players that the fight was unacceptable once they got back to the locker room.
Moore confirmed that to the media in his postgame presser, and echoed that sentiment in his weekly press conference on Monday as well.
“Before we get started, I just want to make a comment about — and I made it after the game — about the postgame skirmish,” Moore said. “Just unacceptable, not how we carry ourselves. We’ll address that internally. That’s not how we represent the block ‘M’ or the winged helmet, so we’ll take care of that and it’ll never happen again.”
Moore declined to provide further detail about what the internal punishments might be. When asked if he had seen the video footage in which graduate running back Kalel Mullings appeared to be involved in a specific skirmish with a member of Michigan State personnel who was on the ground, Moore responded, “No, and we’ll handle it.”
At the time of his presser, Moore had yet to hear from the Big Ten about whether the conference planned to investigate further. Michigan State coach Jonathan Smith shed more light on that possibility in his own Monday presser, though.
“I know Alan Haller, our athletic director, has been in contact with the Big Ten,” Smith said. “My understanding is that they were looking into it.”
Smith shared a similar sentiment as Moore, expressing disappointment with the postgame extracurriculars. And in response to a question about the Spartans personnel on the turf, he acknowledged that he hopes that the conference will investigate that incident further.
“I haven’t thoroughly looked at every angle and all that,” Smith said. “It was a lot of bodies out there. In my experience and learning yesterday, yes, we had a staff member that was in the fray of it, and a player was in the fray of it. That’s what we’re hoping they’re looking into.”
Haller confirmed to reporters later that he reached out to the Big Ten office after the game to request that the conference look into the fight. Similarly to both Smith and Moore, he discussed that while the emotions are high in the rivalry game, fights like that should always be prevented.
What punishments Mullings or anyone else involved in the scrum receives — either internally from Michigan or externally from the Big Ten — are yet to be seen. But as tensions rise in the rivalry once again, Moore has made it clear that this kind of behavior from the Wolverines is unacceptable and can’t happen again.
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