An inexcusable act of alleged assault overshadowed Michigan football's first win over Michigan State since 2019.

After the Wolverines claimed back Paul Bunyan in a 29-7 win over the Spartans, a player was attacked in the tunnel.

Details remain sparse, but a video shared on social media surfaced, showing several MSU players jumping a U-M player, who the University is leaving unnamed.

I've covered the sport for five seasons, and the reporter to my right has covered it for three decades. Neither of us has ever seen or heard of anything like what’s in that video.

This is uncharted territory for anyone in college football.

Let's start with the obvious: don't assault anybody for any reason ever.

Moving on from common sense, jumping the opposition -- not a sucker punch but jumping -- is the epitome of losing, not with dignity, but with dishonor.

When MSU head coach Mel Tucker was asked about the incident in his post-game press conference, allegedly, he didn't know enough about the incident yet to comment.

OK, fair.

But when Tucker sees it, which I'm assuming he did soon after, he's looking at a reflection of himself & the program he claims to have built.

Like any business, college football culture starts from the top.

Head coaches are praised for wins & scolded for losses. They’re to thank & to blame, no in between. No contract is honorable on either side & no job is ever safe (unless you’re in the Kirk Ferentz 1% Club).

Sounds tough but it’s hard for us regular folk to feel bad for millionaires, right?

Sure, the Spartans beat the Wolverines in back-to-back seasons, both as underdogs. And to his credit, Tucker took over a program that Mark Dantonio backdoored for retirement just before National Signing Day.

But let’s revisit who Tucker was before 2021.

In seasons without Kenneth Walker on his team, Tucker is 11-17 as a head coach across three seasons. None of those seasons included an SRS above 1.0 -- a rating that takes into account the average point differential & strength of schedule.

For reference, Harbaugh's last 10 seasons as a college head coach, dating back to Stanford, includes one season with an SRS below 10. Harbaugh-led teams ended six different seasons with an SRS over 15 and currently sit close to 18 in 2022.

Tucker's Spartans are 3-5 with a legitimate possibility of bowl ineligibility following an 11-win season that seemingly reintroduced a new brand of Spartan football, engineered by its head coach.

But uf you take away Tucker's one good season, he doesn't look like a coach who deserves one million -- let alone 90.

When his team lost the rivalry it sent two years priding itself on winning, they opted to solve problems with violence, and it didn't begin with that locker room "scuffle"- an inaccurate description of what clearly was assault started immediately after the final whistle.

As Michigan QB J.J. McCarthy handed the ball off one last time to RB Blake Corum to end the game, several Spartans played aggressor. What looked like an expected chippy end to a rivalry game quickly turned into MSU players holding undisciplined, emotional team members back as the Wolverines literally & figuratively waved them goodbye.

Unfortunately, those emotions carried into the tunnel & eventually onto the unnamed Michigan player.

Again, it starts from the top, and right now, it looks like the only thing "coming" is the termination of an inexplicably overpriced contract.

Mel Tucker earned credit for winning games against Michigan, becoming the only MSU coach to begin 2-0 against the Wolverines -- but everything Tucker's teams have done so far on the field at MSU went out the door when a collection -- not a couple -- of his players attacked a defenseless player from the team who did on the field what MSU elected to do off of it.

There are relevant questions.

"How was he supposed to stop it or control it if he wasn't there?"

It's simple, y'all.

A locker room assault has never happened before in the history of this rivalry, where two things are constant: Michigan & Michigan State.

“Don’t Assault Someone” seems like a pretty basic standard to have. At least 8 MSU players didn’t on Saturday. That’s a leadership issue.

Three years ago, Tucker became a part of this rivalry, and three years later, he's the head coach of the team that will be remembered for the most controversial & outright disturbing moment in the 70-year history of the Battle for Paul Bunyan.

There's only one variable, folks.

Michigan State hates being the perceived "little brother," and most of its motivational & emotional play annually against the Wolverines is driven by that namesake -- which has proven to work well.

So it's a shame that a guy who was still 10 years from being a head coach when the nickname was incepted is the one who revived it to be more relevant than ever before.

That is little brother behavior separate from the history the phrase has around here. Opting to fight after losing is what children do.

It's soft, inexplicable, absurd, and, quite frankly, an unheard-of event in Division I college football.

Reflecting on the butterfly effects of what could transpire following the events, Tucker could lose his job & the players, if charged, will rightfully lose their scholarships.

What happens when the dust settles? Another restart for MSU? A long look in the mirror for Tucker?

Either way, Saturday felt like the beginning of a seismic shift in the rivalry for many reasons, some on the field, where Michigan outgained the Spartans 443-252, but most off of it.

A dark day in college football will end with a victory for the Wolverines -- but how will it end for Tucker? And how will that affect the in-state rivalry?

Michigan State signed its head coach to a $90 million contract last offseason.

Now, the athletic department might have 90 million reasons to move on.

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