New ESPN Tunnel Video Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awq78tQRCy4
Looks like Jacoby Windmon (#4 & not yet suspended) put his helmet on & held Gemon Green whilst Khary Camp (#14 & suspended) hit Green with his helmet.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:30 PM ^
Huh, what a weird coincidence that MSU didn't suspend one of their few players with a pulse on defense after he participated in the assault, but there wasn't video footage of it released yet /s
October 31st, 2022 at 4:12 PM ^
As punishment, Windmon should be forced to cover Donovan Edwards out of the backfield one-on-one in next year's game.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:29 PM ^
He did say they were going to let their pads do the talking. We just didn't have a literal enough interpretation of what he meant.
He also said, and I'll paraphrase that Tuck gave them a history lesson. Tuck clearly didn't have a handle on his audience. What's the over/under on that quote showing up if there's a civil suit?
October 31st, 2022 at 4:40 PM ^
Yep
Trash program
Trash fan base
Trash slappies like Valenti
Stop giving them the courtesy of a “rivalry” game every year as others on here have suggested. Playing UM is little bros only ticket to relevancy.
Imagine their collective existential crisis if we take away the only thing they care about….they would further dissolve into the completely regional program they truly are.
October 31st, 2022 at 5:11 PM ^
Jayden Reed is also right in the middle of the scrum with McBurrows too. There's probably 2-3 others who haven't been suspended who are involved in that video too.
October 31st, 2022 at 6:58 PM ^
MSU believes UM started from their video angle and accusing Harbaugh of lying to authorities and should be punished.
October 31st, 2022 at 7:36 PM ^
Seriously where the fuck do they get Gemon starting it or throwing a punch.
All is see is him trapped and being held by Windmon while Camp...threw multiple helmet swings to the head and body.
Does anyone see it differently?
October 31st, 2022 at 7:22 PM ^
Just wait...He gone! This is far from over. Suspending 4 players is just for openers.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:30 PM ^
The RCMB is taking a victory lap by claiming this clearly shows our guys throwing the first punch. WTF? Where do they see this?
October 31st, 2022 at 3:32 PM ^
I keep rewatching it trying to see the same thing! You can't even really tell what happens at the start (just the guy looking backwards). Eventually it clears out and you get the helmet swinging.
I guess Valenti said an M player made the first move in that video (according to rcmb), so they might just be regurgitating that line?
October 31st, 2022 at 3:49 PM ^
What I can see is our two guys standing next to each other. They're jawin with someone. Then an MSU player pushes Green. He pushes back, #4 gets him with his helmet. Then puts it on and holds Green as Crump freaks out and throws a lot of punches. I can't see the numbers but a few guys were throwing and pushing. McBurrows tries to split it up when it was just the 3 and he gets pulled into the room off to the side.
There were more MSU players than the 4 initially suspended. You can see a few more threw a punch and then ran back to the locker room.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:59 PM ^
One of the state players who is holding on to Green, allowing the helmet-swinging goon to continue wailing away at Green with his helmet, is #14. Several seconds later, a couple of spartan teammates are seen dragging #14 up the tunnel.
October 31st, 2022 at 5:13 PM ^
#14 is the helmet swinger, Crump. #4 is the one holding him, and also appears to throw a body punch. He's Jacoby Windmon.
October 31st, 2022 at 5:47 PM ^
It’s POSSIBLE (as in, the video does not rule out, but doesn’t show clearly either way IMO) that Green was involved in some pushing-shoving crap and was the first to “lay hands” as it were.
But it seems very clear that one or both of 4 and 14 are the ones that escalated it to “actually serious violence”. Absolutely nothing in that video would justify the helmet swinging.
November 1st, 2022 at 6:56 AM ^
I guess if you say it enough, you’ll start believing. I don’t see anything showing Green throwing a punch, but then again I wear corrective lenses. The justification from fans, namely Sparty and even a few buckeyes is sickening. Apparently our players have no right to go straight to THEIR OWN locker room right after the game. That’s their justification, they shouldn’t have been there!
October 31st, 2022 at 3:34 PM ^
I read this as well, and then after watching the video was wondering the same thing. They are also pissed bc they all feel this is normal rivalry behavior, but UM and the media are playing it up to be significantly more than it should be. They also say it is very predictable that the media is painting MSU to be a bunch of thugs. The irony here is that they don't possess the ability to reflect on why exactly they may be considered thugs. Perhaps past behaviors could have predicted this event?
October 31st, 2022 at 4:01 PM ^
We really could use a long diary post citing examples and evidence of all the recent thuggery. I keep hearing MSU fans say it’s isolated and they’ve never done anything else ( including Valenti). It would be good for all of us to reference because we know it’s there.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:12 PM ^
There's good discussion of this in BronxBlue's diary, too--I would like to see the examples of ugly behavior totted up, both sides, to get an informal sense. But I'd add that--as BronxBlue says--our holier than thou attitude might crumble a little in the face of some of our own antics. Or not?
Going beyond any real world list of historical ugly, though, I think you've got to pursue the legal avenues. The message must be sent that football is not a world apart, that there are consequences to physical brutality. Letting the courts have their say will shut MSU fans up quicker than a tribalized court of public opinion.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:22 PM ^
Letting the courts have their say will shut MSU fans up quicker
Just like it did re: the 2020 election?
October 31st, 2022 at 4:25 PM ^
You're not wrong. And I would even say that I agree with your point. But did you have to go there?
October 31st, 2022 at 4:31 PM ^
It's just a very real-life example of when people already have their mind made up about something, and don't want to change their view- it can be incredibly difficult to get through and show a different perspective. Even when presenting data points that counter the original stance.
Trying to unpoliticize it with the wording here
October 31st, 2022 at 4:43 PM ^
I appreciate your diplomatic translation. And it's injecting politics into the sportsblog. Even given I agree with the point, it's still intentionally touching that 3rd rail
October 31st, 2022 at 4:47 PM ^
Yep. Just like the 2016 election and the Russian collusion narrative.
October 31st, 2022 at 8:05 PM ^
We found the Qanon cultist!
October 31st, 2022 at 5:52 PM ^
Well, how can you not? Every time I start thinking how insane all the sparty fans and media are acting about this I remember the republican party...and then I'm even more sad and appalled.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:46 PM ^
You mean the 2016 election?
October 31st, 2022 at 4:48 PM ^
Yeah. Not completely, but yes--people going to jail, the evidence laid out. . . that's better than hearsay and accusation. You return to the rule of law and belief in it by continuing to rigorously use and reinforce them.
And people being arrested or arraigned. . . yeah, that should be sobering for some people.
October 31st, 2022 at 5:34 PM ^
WTF happened to the no politics rule? Absolutely zero value to this reference except partisan political snipery. Plenty of other places on the net to dunk on the GOP (or libs, if that’s your thing).
October 31st, 2022 at 7:43 PM ^
It’s like the NCAA. Selective enforcement.
If people got warned and then bounced it would stop.
October 31st, 2022 at 6:04 PM ^
I turned against MSU with the Troop/Conboy attack on Kampfer in the the 2009 hockey game. By 2011 you had William Gholston twisting Denard's neck. To me it just seems like the thuggish behavior is broadly tolerated across multiple sports. Maybe MSU is an equal opportunity leveler of attacks on other teams -- Draymond Green will attack most anything -- but it sure seems like Michigan bears the brunt.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:30 PM ^
Thugs?
When this first happened there were some posts about "thugs" and "certain kinds of people" resorting to violence. I don't think it is anyone's intent to say anything racist, but the word thug has a bad history of lumping all young black men as violent. Those MSU players acted criminally and they should go to jail for their actions.
From a Vox article on coded language:
1) "Thug"
By its technical definition, "thug" is supposed to refer to a violent person or a criminal. But over time, it has been used so often to refer to black people that it began to carry its own connotation — the racist idea that black people are criminals or violent.
Take, for instance, the Baltimore protests. Were all the protesters in Baltimore, who were demonstrating against Freddie Gray's death in the hands of police, rioting and looting? No, but they were broadly labeled as such, even by the mayor and the president. [Obama]
In comparison, one does not see the same kind of labeling with white rioters, which media outlets like CNN have labeled as, for example, "rowdy" in past instances.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:55 PM ^
Really? When I was growing up thugs rolled their cigs in their shirt pocket, wore shit kicking boots and were white as Wonder bread.
You can technical me all you want but a thug is defined by behavior not color(or should be).
The MSU players acted like street gang thugs.
October 31st, 2022 at 5:08 PM ^
Thugs were professional assassins and thieves in India, so the derivation isn't English; the adoption in England (where we got it from) was also racist, involving fear of an invasion by the Indian criminal class, and by extension Indian immigrants--there's quite a lot out there on this. (Hopefully not too academic for smart people like M grads.)
And yes, the word did come to be applied to mobsters, etc. here before it developed recent dog-whistle status. But it certainly has that now. Poke for two secs, you'll find a lot of press about recent use of the word as code. Apparently, some pols really started ratcheting it up the Baltimore protests in 2015.
These words do have meanings and trajectories and valences, whether people are interested in owning them or not. It's why some of our pols don't want us studying history. Again, shouldn't be controversial for people who went to a great university, but hey, lemming behavior is clearly not only for MSU fans.
October 31st, 2022 at 5:39 PM ^
The problem is that “thug” is actually a useful concept without a great non-problematic equivalent. (Goon? Brute? Gangster? All of those have the same problem).
What SHOULD we use to describe a “guy who builds an identity out of being needlessly violent to show how tough he is”?
If you throw out every word that racists have used to perpetuate racism, you will rapidly run out of words.
October 31st, 2022 at 5:49 PM ^
Or. . .be forced to be careful and accurate and not resort to cliches.
November 1st, 2022 at 10:54 AM ^
plus one. That's the point. It is tempting to paint all Spartans as thugs and it is a slippery slope from there.
October 31st, 2022 at 9:30 PM ^
I'm 68 years old, to me a thug is a violent person, no more no less...
October 31st, 2022 at 10:31 PM ^
Were all the protesters in Baltimore, who were demonstrating against Freddie Gray's death in the hands of police, rioting and looting? No, but they were broadly labeled as such, even by the mayor and the president. [Obama]
This is sophistry. And Obama stressed on multiple occasions, in the very piece cited, that a "handful" of bad actors involved in the protest were "thugs."
To return to the topic at hand, I hope that G. Green has a speedy recovery.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:36 PM ^
If critical reasoning and thinking skills were their forte they would not be at Michigan State.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:34 PM ^
It looks more to me that the MSU player backed him into the wall and then Green and MSU player both push each other. Windmon watched it, put his helmet on, and then went to assault him. There is no excuse for that.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:36 PM ^
It's a very human thing to digest data in order to justify your priors. They want MSU to not be at fault and want UM to be at fault. So they are just going to say the video shows what they want. Honestly, it will sort out. If the police and lawyers are involved, then they have the power to compel testimony and such, so I imagine we'll get a decently accurate idea of what happened eventually. Not like there weren't witnesses and multiple phones. And possibly phones we haven't seen yet either.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:38 PM ^
They see what they want to see. They don't have time for reality.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:38 PM ^
You never want to go full Sparty.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:44 PM ^
If I am going full Sparty-brain on this, I think they are referring to 0:10 & 0:11 of the video. You can see Green push back at an unidentified Spartan. However, that appears to be a response to some sort of immediately preceding contact. My reconstructed timeline looks like this:
0:07 - Green first appears. You can just see his head over the shoulder of MSU 77 along the far wall.
0:08 - Green disappears behind MSU players.
0:09 - Green reappears behind and to the viewer's left of MSU 77.
0:10 - Green lurches back and to the viewer's left.
0:11 - Green appears to push or swing back, presumably at whoever just pushed him.
0:12 - Green backs up against the far wall.
0:14 - MSU players push up against Green and start swinging.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:26 PM ^
Ok, I framed by framed it like you presumably...using 77 as a reference is helpful. But yes, Green comes up over his shoulder and he is right against the wall. It appears jawing has started since MSU players start to turn around. Green goes up against the wall more, then it looks like hand or something goes up toward Green's face. He backs away and sort of ducks. At this time Windmon puts on his helmet. Green then seems to attack back after the initial punch attempt comes in. Then the helmet starts flying in and Windmon jumps in as well. Gets surrounded by more MSU players, then eventually helmet thrower gets dragged away. Don't see McBurrows in there at all. Apparently he was dragged into a different hall?
October 31st, 2022 at 4:34 PM ^
McBurrows is clearly visible at 16 seconds charging with Green to back MSU guys off. What it looks like to me is that there was some jawing, there may have been a little physical pushing, then some clear pushing away by Green and an MSU player. At that point, it should have ended and this would probably have never seen the light of day. However, Green gets backed against the wall again and someone clearly takes a shot at him. That's when Green and McBurrows both surge forward to defend themselves. Being two on more than a dozen, that ends how you would expect in tight quarters.
October 31st, 2022 at 4:48 PM ^
I did not go frame-by-frame, but slowed playback to 25% on the linked YouTube video. Based on the way heads turn before my reconstruction starts, I agree that someone was chirping before the pushing and shoving started at 0:10. Once Green reappears, he has his back to the wall, then something or someone comes after him, he pushes back, and then the assault starts in earnest.
To your last point, I believe McBurrows ended up pulled down a hall that is farther down (toward the field) and to the viewer's right.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:46 PM ^
To me it looks like the first punch comes from behind Green. I guess in theory it could have been McBurrows, but it looks like it's Green who gets hit so that doesn't really make any sense. Definitely not Green or Widmon who punch first.
October 31st, 2022 at 3:52 PM ^
Valenti keeps repeating this on the radio, too.. big shocker.