MSU’s Sherrone Moore and Jonathan Smith react to postgame fight

With two new head coaches on the sidelines of this year’s Michigan-Michigan State rivalry game, there was a general belief that much of the toxicity that has plagued this annual meeting in the state would dissipate in 2024.

For the most part, that was true during the Wolverines’ 24-17 win over the Spartans on Saturday night, but 59 minutes and 30 seconds of good, tough football was marred in the final 30 seconds of the contest. After Michigan’s final knee, Wolverine tight end Colston Loveland and MSU defensive lineman Anthony Jones shared some shoving and verbal jabs before an all-out physical altercation ensued on the Michigan Stadium field.

In their respective postgame press conferences, Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore and Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith reacted to the scrimmage to end the game:

“I told the team that it’s unacceptable, regardless of what happened and how it started. There are guys yelling at us and us responding. And the guy head-butted Colston at the end, and our job is to represent this university, not respond to that. “It’s letting the referees take care of that. So that’s something we’ll handle internally and make sure we take care of that, but that’s not who we are in Michigan football.”

“Yeah, a little bit, I saw it on the other side of the field. It’s an emotional game. And yeah, don’t you love ending it that way. Especially, I thought for the football game itself, it was physical. I think the guys played very tough and I thought it was a pretty clean game, so it’s tough to end that way.”

This latest postgame incident adds to what has been a growing list of confrontations between these two programs in recent years, including the now infamous tunnel incident in 2022, the last time Michigan hosted Michigan State in the Big House . The Wolverines and Spartans will have to wait another 365 days before renewing the rivalry in East Lansing next season, but hopefully Moore and Smith can reduce the nastiness of this series in the coming year.

– Enjoy more Michigan Wolverines coverage at Michigan Wolverines On SI –

For additional coverage of University of Michigan athletics: