EAST LANSING, Mich. _ Dan Dakich doubled down on his hot takes about Michigan State Thursday.
Rather than issue the apology MSU basketball coach Tom Izzo demanded after Tuesday night's win over Ohio State, the ESPN analyst and talk show host said that the furor over his recent tweets were "much ado about nothing, in my opinion."
"Tom Izzo went after me. And hey, if I'm gonna spew it, I gotta take it," Dakich said on his radio show on ESPN 1070 in Indianapolis. "You know what? Tom felt like he needed to protect his program. My problem is I don't think he really understood who I was tweeting at. I wasn't tweeting at a school or a student body, I was tweeting at individuals.
"In my opinion, there's differences _ maybe not to anybody else, but in my opinion, there's differences."
The Izzone bellowed chants of "We Hate Dakich" and rained boos on the TV color analyst throughout MSU's 74-66 win over Ohio State.
Izzo said at first he was angry with then fans, then asked an athletic staff member why they were so venomous. He was shown Dakich's tweets in which Dakich called MSU fans whiners, said "MSU is always worried about UM," and accused a Twitter user of only going to MSU because he did not get into Michigan (which Dakich called "the gut shot" on his show). He deleted some of them.
"Danny owes our fans and our students an apology," Izzo said of Dakich, who also broadcast MSU's loss a week earlier at Michigan, where his son Andrew plays. "I probably won't get it. I always got along with Dan. But as you know, it seems like, this year, a lot of people have been mad at me. But I would have loved to get in that Izzone and join those chants. If I was on Twitter _ thank God I'm not, thank God some of my friends are."
Dakich said he doesn't blame Izzo for his response, but he added that he believes that the Hall of Fame coach lacks context about the tweets.
Dakich said he enjoys online interaction with fans and added that he "talked with the Michigan State people, and I'm cool with it." He called Izzo "a great coach" but did not say whether he spoke directly with him about the issue.
One thing Dakich wanted to make clear: He only was attacking individual Twitter users, not Izzo nor the university.
"You know, you get in a little Twitter spat, which people say, 'Well, Dan, why do you do that, man? You're 54 years old,' " Dakich said. "And my answer is simply this, when I got into the media, I had nothing else. I wasn't going back into coaching, so I could not be the guy who says, 'I don't understand Twitter, I don't understand computers.' I dove right in _ for better or worse. Probably worse. And that includes me trading barbs with people. ...
"When people tweet at me, I tweet back. Because that's what they want. That's just what they want. But then it becomes a contentious thing, man. And then it becomes, like, a full-blown attack."
Dakich, who broadcast his first NBA game Wednesday night for ESPN, called it "a fun couple days." He added that he "really, really, really, really enjoys" visiting MSU. He called the chants directed at him "cool" and said he "loved every minute of it."
Dakich will be on the call Saturday, when the Spartans play at Purdue (4 p.m. EST, ESPN). So he wants to make sure you tune in, like he did when ending his radio segment by apparently quoting an email or tweet: " 'Dan, shut up, you know what you're doing to make your (radio) show No. 1.' "
"Maybe," Dakich added.
