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

That was mostly true during the Wolverines’ 24-17 win over the Spartans on Saturday night, but 59 minutes and 30 seconds of good, hard football was marred in the final 30 seconds of the contest. After Michigan’s last kneel, Wolverine tight end Colston Loveland and MSU defensive end Anthony Jones shared some pushing and shoving as well as verbal abuse before a full-on physical altercation on the field at Michigan Stadium.

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

“I told the team it’s unacceptable no matter what happened and how it started. There are guys who chirp at us and we respond. And the guy headbutted Colston at the end and our job is to represent this university , not to answer that. It’s to let the referees handle that, so we’ll handle that, but it’s not us.

“Yeah, a little bit, I saw it on the other side of the field. It’s an emotional game. And, yeah, you don’t like to end it like that. Mostly, I thought for the game of football itself, it been physical, I think the guys played really hard and I thought it was a pretty clean game, so it’s hard to finish like that.

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

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