This is where the adults in the room are supposed to say "enough." And if you think that's about to happen here, you've got the wrong room.
Yeah, Jim Harbaugh just likened Michigan State to stormtroopers. Yeah, he said the Spartans were bush league _ again. Yeah, he called MSU's pregame, on-field walk Saturday orchestrated.
And?
Good for him. He said what he thought. He doesn't like the Spartans or think very much of their coach, Mark Dantonio, even using his own words against him when he said what happened in East Lansing on Saturday wasn't a product of MSU's team, but its program.
Why?
Well, maybe because it's ... a ... rivalry.
A heated one. Like it's always been. It's just all out in the open now.
It's about time. This is what we've always wanted, right? This is a big part of what makes college football well, college football.
Otherwise, it's the NFL.
You didn't hear Lions head coach Matt Patricia say his goal was to beat the Bears when he got hired, as Dantonio said about Michigan when he took over at MSU. Or as Jim Tressel said about Michigan when he took over Ohio State.
In college, it's often about one game, about an opponent you want to beat so bad that you circle them on the calendar a year in advance, as Harbaugh admitted he did a year ago after his Wolverines lost to MSU.
So, if you're a U-M fan you can blame MSU for the pregame dust-up Saturday, for the increased vitriol the last few years, for the reason your linebacker, Devin Bush, dug his feet into the mid-field logo like a bull carving a trench in the dirt.
Harbaugh sure did.
"After what just took place, that's straight out of the (old Bad Boy) Pistons playbook," he said. "Do something to them, say something to them, elbow them, and then when somebody else does something back, then flop. That's how I think about that. It's unsportsmanlike, it's bush league and that is putting it very mildly."
And if you're an MSU fan, you can blame U-M, because its players could've easily moved out of the way, because Bush didn't have to dig into the logo, because Harbaugh didn't have to take a shot at Dantonio on Twitter, as he did last December, when he congratulated MSU for bouncing back after its off-the-field issues.
Both fan bases would be right. The other side has upped the ante. But both sides would be wrong, too. Because ... the other side has upped the ante.
This is how rivalries work. Besides, isn't this what you've always wanted?
Hey, I'm not advocating fisticuffs or actual shoving matches or any kind of pregame or postgame violence. And while Harbaugh said he worried that Saturday's incident could have led to some, and I don't doubt he meant it, his players could have slid out of the way as soon as they saw MSU began their arm-in-arm march.
But they didn't want to back down, either.
That's the point. Each was trying to intimidate the other. To send a message. And if it looks like MSU didn't mind that a handful of U-M players were in their way, then those players sure didn't mind holding their ground.
As Harbaugh said after the game, his team wasn't going to back down.
Call it gamesmanship.
Woody Hayes had his team knock down an "M" banner before a game. He also purposefully had his team warm up in the wrong end zone at Michigan Stadium.
Two years ago, when Harbaugh's Wolverines played at Ohio State, the teams got into a shouting, trash-talking free-for-all near midfield, and all those teams were doing was warming up.
Rival schools have accused the other of changing schedules at the last minute and wreaking havoc with traffic patterns. Harbaugh said MSU kept changing the time it was going to warm-up on Saturday.
"They gave us a time," he explained. "'It'll be at 9:45 (a.m.).' (We) said OK, great.' Then, 'well, it might be 9:55, now it is going to be 9:55. That walk happened another 10 minutes after that. At no point was there any kind of heads up or, 'hey could you guys please leave the field.' "
MSU's quarterback, Brian Lewerke, said the team's strength and conditioning coach, Ken Mannie, had asked U-M to clear the field. U-M denied this.
Maybe it was a miscommunication. Or maybe it was orchestrated.
Dantonio said the whole thing was juvenile when asked about it after the game. Harbaugh didn't like that word, either, and accused Dantonio of trying to "brush it under the carpet."
For years, MSU felt disrespected by U-M and its fan base. And for years U-M acted like MSU was nothing more than lint on the shoulder, a slight annoyance
Whether that was true was always beside the point. MSU felt it. Dantonio seized upon it and used that to fuel his program.
On Saturday, the Wolverines responded. On Monday, Harbaugh responded again.
He arrived at his weekly press conference with a piece of paper folded into his pocket. He had things to say. He made sure everyone heard him, including the folks wearing green.
Now it's their turn to respond.
They've got a year. The calendar is circled.
As it should be.
