Michigan fans vandalized a legendary statue of former Michigan State basketball player Magic Johnson sometime between late Wednesday night and the early hours of Thursday morning. The statue, located outside of MSU’s Breslin Center, had the words “BEAT STATE” and a large M painted on the statue.
Michigan State basketball player Alvin Ellis tweeted out a picture of the damage Thursday morning.
😳😳😳 So disrespectful. 😡😡😡 pic.twitter.com/zkraUAsfxu
— Alvin Ellis (@AEllisIII) October 15, 2015
MSU spokesman Jason Cody confirmed the vandalism to MLive.com and added that two other places had also been damaged. Tracy Harris, a utility worker with MSU Landscape Services, said that due to the complexity of the statue that it would take a long time to fix and clean and that, “We’re going to be here for a while.” Cody said of the incident, “It’s not fun and games, it’s a crime.” Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo told the Detroit News that messing with the Magic Johnson statue is worse than standard vandalism, saying, “Messing with Sparty is a bad thing, just like messing with their ‘M’ is a bad thing, but messing with Magic — that’s a worse thing.” While at Big 10 Media Day, Izzo added that, “There’s a lot of great Michigan kids, and there’s some idiots — and there’s some idiots on our side that do crazy things.”
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This is not a new trend between the two rivals. Throughout the past couple years there have been several high profile cases of vandalism.
The block ‘M’ on Michigan’s campus has been painted green. pic.twitter.com/lGFvnXeVbv — Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) October 22, 2014
Michigan State’s Spartan statue vandalized this morning by Wolverines: (via @247Sports) pic.twitter.com/DMIJWy8wnB
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) April 16, 2015
Michigan State, ranked #7, will face off against #12 Michigan Saturday afternoon in one of the biggest college football games of the year.