To get away from the very enjoyable and equally, well, enjoyable "piling on" as to the MSU suspensions, this incident is really, really damaging for Michigan State. If they accept a bowl bid, which actually still may a question mark given this debacle, I cannot see the bowl game as being anything but their funeral for this season. If the incident went down as reported and all of these players were involved, I don't think this incident will be easily swept aside in the near future.
If you are current MSU commit, or the parents of such a commit, this has to give you serious pause as to attending MSU and playing for this football team. Ski masks? Seriously? If you are a season ticket holder, do you renew?
If the incident was confined to Winston, I can see this being swept aside as a rogue player that blew a second chance. However, Dell, Cunningham, Rucker, these were highly regarded MSU players, many upperclassman.
Further, at some point, this does become Dantonio's responsibility. True, these players attend MSU, the university, for an education and are certainly influenced by several factors. However, their primary role at the university is a member of the football team that Dantonio coaches.
This incident raises several concerns, one of which is how much of these players attention was focused on the Friday night incident during the hours of 3:30 - 7:00 PM on Saturday when they were being drubbed by Penn State, and how long exactly did it take after the game until they were back to plotting the thing that appeared to be first and foremost on the mind, the masked attack.
I know that Dantonio cannot be expected to "babysit" these players all of the time, but it seems like he could have gotten a feel for this one. Again, this was not one player, or even two or three, it was at least 8 players from his team, many of them starters. Come on now.
I think this incident is a big deal for the MSU program and for Dantonio. I don't know if it will directly bring about his demise at MSU, but I think if his demise occurs, it will in one way or another be traceable back to this incident.