In February In 2020, Mark Dantonio – by far the most successful football coach in Michigan State history – retired. The stress of managing 120 studentathletes wore it every year, said Dantonio. He wanted to make his life less complicated, so he stepped away from football and East Lansing.
More difficult to ignore, however, were reports that Dantonio decried the sexual misconduct allegations against his players. A Outside the lines research Just days before the announcement of Dantonio’s retirement, it was reported that Dantonio has not been as diligent in addressing sexual assault allegations against his players, including making baffling comments to the media about his history of dealing with such claims:
Since Dantonio’s tenure began in 2007, at least 16 MSU football players have been accused of sexual assault or violence against women, according to interviews and public records obtained by Outside the lines. In fact, Dantonio is said to have been involved in tackling the discipline in at least one of the cases several years ago. As recently as June, Dantonio was confronted by a crowd of reporters asking questions about four of his football players accused of sexual assault. Six questions later, a reporter asked Dantonio how he had previously handled such allegations.
“This is new territory for us,” Dantonio replied. “We’ve been here for 11 years – it’s never happened before.”
Worse, Dantonio’s handling of sexual assault allegations against his players seemed to indicate someone who had little to no understanding of the dynamics of sexual assault. OTL reported that in one case in which an MSU football player was accused of sexual assault, Dantonio had the player talks to his mother about what he had done.
It is impossible to read Dantonio’s decision to retire as entirely separate from the scrutiny MSU was experiencing at the time, largely due to the administration’s handling of the Larry Nassar scandal. Just over a week before announcing his retirement, Dantonio denounced the OTL report, proverb that all reports that he had handled sexual assault complaints individually were false and that he would not resign. What happened during that statement and Dantonio’s decision to retire a little over a week later? That’s impossible to say, but it’s notable that media coverage of MSU’s handling of allegations of sexual misconduct — and by extension Dantonio’s — continued to increase during that time.
How then can a coach who retired in the middle of a report on his alleged mishandling of sexual assault allegations be the person MSU chooses to bring back in the wake of head football coach Mel Tucker’s suspension following allegations of his sexual harassment? Late yesterday, following a USA Today report that Tucker had harassed sexual assault prevention advocate Brenda Tracy, MSU Athletic Director Alan Haller announced that Tucker would be suspended without pay, secondary coach Harlon Barnett the team’s interim coach and Dantonio would serve as a special assistant.
If you had any doubts about whether or not MSU “gets it” when it comes to the proper handling of Title IX complaints or transparency as a state institution, it doesn’t. Although Tracy filed her Title IX complaint against Tucker in December, the school took no recognizable action against Tucker until USA Today blew the lid off the story Saturday evening. Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach reported that Haller told the media that “interim measures” had been taken, but those “interim measures” appeared to be limited to the fact that Tucker had no contact with Tracy and that Haller had “increased oversight of the program.” But unless MSU administrators were monitoring Tucker 24 hours a day, even when he was away from the university and its electronic communications, it’s hard to see how any of this amounts to a sufficient response. The decision that the answer to yet another public sexual misconduct scandal at MSU is more Mark Dantonio is further evidence that no one at MSU has any idea what they are doing when it comes to handling Title IX complaints.
Deadspin reached out to Michigan State Athletics and AD Alan Haller for comment. At the time of publication we had not received a response.
MSU football fans will undoubtedly cheer Dantonio’s return to football at East Lansing, where he remains a beloved figure. But for those concerned about sexual violence against women and against the university After repeated failures in handling it, Dantonio’s return appears to be a sign of a government that continues to go in circles.