Twenty-eight. He is twenty-eight years old. I have shoes older than the head coach of Michigan State University. I have a JACKET older than him, Marcus, and it's a good jacket.
The jacket's fine, Dave.
The jacket is tremendous. That's not the point. The point is my alma mater — a real football school, a program that beat the number two team in the country in a snowstorm, that produced Bubba Smith, that has a WALL — hired a marching band kid to run the whole operation. Offense. Defense. Recruiting. The NIL. All of it. This is Michigan State football, not a startup incubator.
See, and I want to be careful here, because I know what happens next —
What happens next is you defend him.
I'm not defending it. I'm describing the logic so I don't have to stare into the sun. There's a difference and you keep pretending there isn't.
Trombone! See — the people know. Read another one.
Okay, the czar thing is not helping anybody, that's the school's word, not his —
It's a real title, Marcus! They gave him a made-up empire title! You know who has total control? A guy who's earned it over thirty years. Not a guy whose head-coaching résumé is one — ONE — year of high school football in Brooklyn. That's not a résumé, that's a LinkedIn a kid updates on the bus.
Here's the part I'll actually give you, and then you have to let me finish. The résumé is thin. That's not a slur, that's a fact, everybody in the building would tell you that. High school scout, high school coordinator, one year as a head coach, and now he's calling plays on both sides of the ball in the Big Ten. That should not work. On paper it is insane.
Thank you.
But I sat in a room where people who do this for a living got quiet and interested, and I'm trying to tell you WHY, and every time I do you hear "believer." I'm not a believer. I can follow a football argument without signing up for it. You do that with the Lions every August.
So make the argument. Go ahead. I'll wait. I've got all afternoon and a lot of anger.
The evaluation background is real. Whatever you think of him, the man built an actual reputation projecting NFL talent — finding guys other people were wrong about. That's a skill. That's the same skill that wins you the transfer portal now, which is basically half the sport. And the offensive stuff he puts out — the "complex for opponents, simple for us" thing — that's not fluff, that's a real coaching philosophy that real coordinators are chasing right now.
"Complex for opponents, simple for us." You know what's simple for us, Marcus? Losing. We've got that DOWN. We are elite at that.
See, that's the energy. Cautiously the stadium is standing.
Do not lower the bar to "the building is intact." That is the Michigan State bar and I refuse it. Let me ask you the real question. He's calling offense AND defense. Both. At the same time. On a Saturday. Name me the last guy who did that well in this league.
You can't, and neither can I, and that IS the scariest part, I'm not going to sit here and pretend it isn't. That's a genuine red flag, not a talking point. The counter is he hired adults around him — a veteran O-coordinator to run the QB teaching, a real defensive coordinator with actual credibility — so he's not doing it alone in a shed. He's the guy with final say who wants to be argued with before he decides.
Oh, he WANTS to be argued with. Fantastic. A committee. We've replaced a football coach with a group project.
That's lazy and you know it. Every good program in America is a room full of guys arguing behind a closed door and then walking out saying the same thing. That's not new, Dave. That's Monday.
Don't tell me how it works now like I fell off the turnip truck this morning. I've watched this program hire the safe guy, hire the hot guy, hire the culture guy, hire the coordinator, hire the retread — and it ends the same way every single time. In November. In the cold. With everybody's grandmother explaining what went wrong. This school cannot help itself. It just cannot.
And that — right there — that's the thing I can't get past either, and it's got nothing to do with him. Even if the plan is smart, you need me to believe Michigan State is the school that finally found the loophole. Little old us. The department that steps on a rake in an empty room. THAT'S the ask. And whatever this guy knows about ball, running Michigan State football is a different animal, and this school has never once been good at that animal.
"Do not read my name." Sir, you texted a radio station at your lowest moment. That's on you.
And honestly? That guy is the entire fanbase right now. Nobody's converted. Everybody just watched the tape at one in the morning and now they feel weird about themselves. That's not faith. That's cope. It might be cope. I'm telling you it might be cope.
It's cope! You said it, not me! Let's take one, let's go to the phones. Jerry in Owosso, you're on The Mitt, go.
Yeah, hey, longtime, so here's my thing. Everybody keeps saying young, young, young. My question is: is he young, or are we just OLD? Because Indiana was a punchline and then they went and played for the whole thing. Curt Cignetti walked in and told everybody exactly how good he was and then WAS. So if Indiana can do that, what exactly is our excuse for laughing at a guy before he's coached a down?
Jerry. Jerry, I love you, you're killing me. Indiana hired a grown man with a proven track record who'd already won everywhere he went. We hired a guy whose track record is a YouTube channel and a good interview. Those are not the same rock. One's a rock, one's a PowerPoint.
But Jerry's half right and it stings — the "are we just old" part. Some of this reaction isn't analysis, it's reflex. The sport is turning into roster management and portal math and evaluation, and this hire is aggressively pointed at that world. You can hate the pick and still admit it's aimed at the right decade. Whether MSU can pull it off is a completely separate question, and on that one I'm right there with Dave — no evidence yet.
"Aimed at the right decade." I'm putting that on a shirt and lighting it on fire.
Fair.
Quick break. Before we do — this segment of Spartan meltdown is brought to you by Kowalski Heating and Cooling. When your whole world is falling apart, at least the house can be a comfortable temperature. That's the tag. That's real. I didn't write it, but I mean it. Kowalski. Comfort during collapse.
Here's what really twists me up, Marcus, and I've been sitting on this. The quarterback. He's benching the kid who actually steadied that offense last year for a redshirt freshman nobody's seen throw a live ball. On a HUNCH. On upside. That's the whole hire in one decision — take the flashy bet, tell everybody to trust the process, and pray.
I'll say two things and then I'll drop it. One, he hasn't thrown anyone under the bus doing it — he's gone out of his way not to make the other kid sound like a loser, which, credit, a lot of guys wouldn't. Two, if your entire pitch is "I find upside other people miss," then playing it safe at quarterback would be the thing that contradicts you. It's consistent. Consistent is not the same as correct.
"Consistent is not the same as correct." Are you writing my show for me now?
Somebody's got to.
No. No, we're not moving on from it. I let you have your little "consistent isn't correct" bit and now I want to actually do this, because I have been civil about this for six days and civility has gotten me nowhere. Say the names. Out loud, on the air. Say them.
Leo Hannan. Redshirt freshman.
And the other one.
Alessio Milivojevic.
Alessio Milivojevic. Who took that offense last year — THAT offense, Marcus, the one that could not get out of a phone booth — and made it a functioning thing. Held it upright. Took the hits nobody wanted to take. Stood at a podium after games where he was the only guy in the building willing to stand at a podium. Did every single thing a program asks a kid to do, in order, without complaining, in public, for months. And now a twenty-eight-year-old looks at all of that and goes, "great, love it, we're playing the freshman."
Redshirt freshman.
OH. Redshirt. Well, hold the phone, that's completely different, I withdraw everything. He's practically a war veteran. Marcus, listen to me —
I'm listening.
— in what world does earning it mean anything anymore. Genuinely. That's not a bit. That is the whole ballgame for me. You tell a nineteen-year-old kid, do it right, be early, be dependable, take the hit, don't transfer, don't cry about it, don't put anything on the internet, be the adult in the room when there are no adults in the room. And he does ALL of it. And a guy who's never held a whistle in this league walks in off the internet and says, sorry, pal, I watched some clips, I like the other kid's arm. What was any of it FOR?
Go, you're on, go ahead.
Okay so — hi, yes — I don't call, I've never called. But my son played, not there, smaller school, doesn't matter. And what I want to say is, when they tell you that the way to get it is to do everything right, and then somebody's kid does everything right, and they hand it to the shinier one anyway — what do you say to the next kid in your program? What do you tell HIM? Because you can't say the words anymore. The words are gone. You've spent the words.
Denise, you just said in forty seconds what I have been failing to say for six days, and I do this professionally. That's it. That's the whole thing. You spent the words.
Can I —
No, because I know where you're going, you're going to say ceiling —
I'm going to say ceiling, yeah, because it's the actual argument and somebody in this building should be able to state it. Here it is. If you play Alessio, you know roughly what this season is. It's competent. It's steady. It's watchable. And it's also the exact same season, and in December everybody has the same conversation they've had for four Decembers. That's the floor. The floor is safe and the floor is also a trap, because MSU's problem isn't that they haven't been steady enough, it's that steady has been getting them nowhere.
So torch the kid.
That's not — Dave. The other side of it is you've got a young guy in the building who might be able to do things nobody on this roster can do, and the only way you find out is to actually play him, and the only cheap year to find out is the year nobody expects anything anyway. That's the logic. I'll go further, I think it's interesting. I've turned it over and I get why a room full of smart people talked themselves into it.
Here it comes.
And I keep landing in the same place, which is: I can explain the logic and still think it's a hell of a thing to do to a kid who did his job. Both. At once. That's where I live now. I've got no plans to move.
No. Nope. Whoever that is, put the phone down and go outside. That's not it. You can be against this decision without kicking a kid on your way through it, and I want that on the record, because in about a week that's going to be the noise in this town and I'm not doing it. He didn't lose anything. He got told it wasn't enough. There's a difference and it's a big one.
That's the most decent thing you've said in a month.
I'm a decent man having a bad week. Let's take another — Kyle, Portland, go.
Hey guys, love the show. I'm actually fine with it? Like, if the coach thinks the freshman's the guy, I'd rather he just play the freshman in Year One than get cute about it in October when —
Kyle. Kyle, buddy. How old are you.
...Twenty-four?
Twenty-four! There it is! Of course you're fine with it, you've never had to wait for anything in your LIFE, you people get a package in three hours —
That's not really a football argu—
It's a CHARACTER argument, Kyle, and it's the only one that's ever mattered! Thank you for the call, love you, mean it.
You steamrolled him. He had a point and you drove a bus through him.
He had half a point and I'm at capacity. And here's what nobody wants to say about this coach — he doesn't actually care about Alessio, because Alessio isn't HIS. He didn't find him. There's no story in him. This is a guy who built a whole career on being the man who spotted the guy nobody else spotted, and now he's got a job where the only way to keep being that guy is to play the kid who proves he was right. That's not a football decision. That's a personal-brand decision with a helmet on it.
Okay, no. That one I'm taking back off you.
Take it, then.
Because it's the one thing he hasn't done. He's had six chances to make Alessio sound like a placeholder and he hasn't taken a single one. Not a wink, not a "we love his leadership" hospice quote, nothing. He's said the kid made him better at his job. You can call the decision arrogant. You can call it reckless, I'll drive you there. But "he doesn't care about the kid" is you deciding what's in a man's head because it makes your segment easier, and you'd hit the roof if somebody did it to you.
...Fine. Strike the brand part. I'll take reckless.
Thank you.
Reckless is worse anyway. Read another one, I want to stay mad.
...Read that one again.
"The first honest day anybody ever gave me."
Yeah. See — I don't like that. I don't like what that does to me. Because the version in my head is a kid getting robbed, and Randy's telling me there's a version where the kid gets told the truth early instead of getting strung along till Halloween, and that's — no. No, I'm not doing this, you're not getting me. It's still wrong.
You wobbled.
I did not wobble, I acknowledged a texter. Randy, thank you, genuinely, and I hate you a little bit. Break. Kowalski Heating and Cooling, they're still here, they're still climate-controlling your despair, we'll be right back and the lines are still full and I have not begun to be upset.
Get him OFF my board. Get him — how did an Ann Arbor number even get in here. That's it, that's the one that hurts, because he's not wrong today, that's the thing, he is not wrong TODAY.
He's not wrong today. And if Michigan pulled a stunt like this — hired a 28-year-old band kid to run the whole thing — we would laugh at them for twenty years. We'd never let it go. So I can't pretend the reaction's crazy, because we'd be the ones leading it.
TWENTY years! We'd make documentaries! And that's my whole point, that's the entire point — you don't fix an unserious athletic department with the unserious hire. You just don't. You bring in a serious person to prove you're serious. Instead we did the most Michigan State thing imaginable, which is find the one option that gets the entire country pointing and laughing, and then call it vision.
And yet — and I hate that I have to say "and yet" — nobody can look away from it. That's the trap. Ohio State's terrifying, Oregon's a machine, and both of those are boring conversations compared to this one. Everybody in the country wants to talk about us. Us! We have not been worth talking about in years.
...That one's too nice. I don't know how to yell at that one. Next.
You froze. Look at you. Somebody asked it sincerely and you buffered.
I did not buffer. I chose peace for four seconds. Here's my answer: if it works, I will be delighted, and I will still say this was a reckless, irresponsible way to run a program that happened to hit. A lottery ticket paying off does not make buying it wise. And I don't think it hits. I think Notre Dame tells us everything.
Week three. At their place.
Week three. At their place. A program that is lightyears — LIGHTyears — ahead of us in every measurable way, run by grown-ups, and we're rolling in with a freshman quarterback and a head coach who was in a marching band during a Final Four four minutes ago. That's not a football game. That's an autopsy with the lights on and the whole country watching it happen.
I'm not going to argue Notre Dame with you. That one scares me too. All I'll say is Week 0's a bye — we've got Grambling, then Eastern, then that. So we get a couple weeks of pretending before the sun comes up. Enjoy the pretending.
The pretending is the best part of every Michigan State season, Marcus. It's the only part we're any good at.
That's the most honest text we've gotten all day. "I don't know how that sentence ends." Frame that one. Every single person listening to this station is somewhere in that sentence.
Alright. That's a segment. When we come back — I've got a list of every young genius who was going to change football and I am going to read all of them, alphabetically, out of pure spite, and Marcus is going to sit there and take it.
I'll take it. I'm not defending him. I keep saying that and you keep not hearing it.
I hear it. I just don't believe YOU believe it. 100.9, The Mitt, don't touch that dial, it's the only thing in this state still working.
