Let's play a quick game of word association.
When I say "Michigan State University," what sport immediately springs to mind?
Basketball? Sure -- there have been National Championships and Final Four appearances, frequently, in the past 25-30 years. Hockey? I can see that -- what with NCAA Championships and Frozen Four battles dotting the landscape in the same time frame.
Some of you may have said football. Maybe because that's the season that we're currently winding down. Maybe because the Spartans are off on another coaching search. But doubtful that too many associate the sport with Michigan State University, especially if you were to ask in, say, May.
Butch Davis is one of those college football coaches who should keep his rear end firmly planted in the sphere of academia. The NFL is not for him. No surprise, for you could write a book about all the great pro coaches who made a seamless transition from college, and that book could be read -- and reread -- on the way to the corner store for bread and milk. And you'd still have time left over.
The most recent indictment of the Spartan football program was the acceptance, by Davis -- whose failed NFL try came in Cleveland after some success in college at Miami (FL) -- of the coaching gig at the University of North Carolina. Another school whose association is hardly with the gridiron.
UNC is a basketball school. Dean Smith, Michael Jordan, all that. It is not a football school. Some would say that puts it in line with MSU, indeed.
But the fact that Davis, who reportedly was being considered in East Lansing, apparently rebuffed the Spartans so that he might coach football on Tobacco Road, is the latest stab at the health of the Michigan State football community. There was a time, not all that long ago, when the thought of choosing UNC over MSU, in football, would have been considered folly for someone of Davis' college resume. No longer. It barely registered a blip on the media's screen.
UNC hasn't done much of anything in football recently. Their record in their last 70 games is 25-45. Not unexpected, coming from a basketball school.
MSU is, in most people's eyes, a basketball school. The niche folk would say it's a hockey school. It is losing whatever status it had as a football school very rapidly.
I don't know who the next coach will be, nor where he will come from. But I do know that whether you consider Michigan State University a basketball school or a hockey school, one thing is certain.
It didn't used to be that way.
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