In a rivalry that had turned increasingly sour over the past several years on the football side of things, Michigan and Michigan State battled in what was a physical, but clean game for the most part on Saturday night in the Wolverines’ 24-17 victory over the Spartans at the Big House.
At the very end of the game, however, a skirmish did break out when Michigan tight end Colston Loveland and Michigan State defensive lineman Anthony Jones went face to face and had words with each other. The two proceeded to exchange shoves when multiple players from both teams then tried to come to their teammates’ defense while the two separated.
In his postgame interview with BTN on the field, Loveland did not mince words when speaking of the incident and MSU in general during the heat of the moment.
“Lil bro (will) stay doing lil bro things,” Loveland said. “MSU (is the) little bro. They can do whatever they want, we knew it was going to get chippy, but everything in the confines of the game we do right, then after, if they (MSU) want to get busy, we’ll get busy.”
Several minutes later, once Loveland got a chance to get to the locker room and make his way to the postgame presser, he took a much different tone when asked about the situation, admitting that he did get “carried away” in the moment.
“It always gets chippy, I kind of got carried away there at the end,” said Loveland. “We were just talking back and forth, kind of doing some shoving and stuff. That’s how the rivalry gets, it’s all just the heat of the moment—coming off of two losses, we really needed this one. I just kind of got excited, but we respect every opponent we play. They’re a great football team, it came down to the wire.”
The incident happened closer to Michigan’s sideline, which made it difficult to see for Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith.
He added that he thought it was a physical and competitive, but clean game throughout and considered it unfortunate the game ended in that fashion.
“It’s an emotional game, and you don’t love finishing that way, especially for what I thought—the football game itself—it was physical, I think guys were playing really hard and I thought it was a pretty clean game,” Smith said. “So it’s tough to finish that way.”
Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore said he told his team getting involved in the incident was unacceptable regardless of what happened or how it started.
“Our job is to represent this University and not respond to that and let the refs handle that,” Moore said. “It’s something that we’ll handle internally and make sure we take care of, but that’s not Michigan football. That’s not who we are.”
---
Discuss this article with our community on our premium message boards
Not a subscriber to Maize & Blue Review? Sign up today to gain access to all the latest Michigan intel M&BR has to offer
Follow our staff on Twitter: @JoshHenschke, @Berry_Seth14, @TrevorMcCue, @DennisFithian, @BrockHeilig, @JimScarcelli, @Jerry_Diorio
Subscribe to our podcasts: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify
Check out Maize & Blue Review's video content on YouTube
Follow Maize & Blue Review on social media: Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram
