Desmond Howard has never really been a favorite college football analyst of Michigan State fans, but it’s not just because he’s a former Michigan star. He’s been one of the more biased college football personalities in the country and he’s shoved down our throats every Saturday morning during the season.
ESPN’s College GameDay has guys like Nick Saban and Kirk Herbstreit who could also be biased toward Alabama and Ohio State, respectively, but both do a pretty good job of being impartial.
Desmond? Not so much. He’s always picking Michigan to win, and that dates back to the prime Mark Dantonio days. Yes, we expect him to root for his alma mater, but never picking against Michigan on a show in which he’s supposed be unbiased unless, outside of the celebrity guest picker, is not just a bad look but it also lessens the value of his weekly picks.
It’s clear that he’s a homer, and it’s something that we’ve all come to expect at this point. Desmond just isn’t going to say anything bad about Michigan — MSU has guys like that, too.
However, it’s OK to be critical of the university and athletic department, especially with how tumultuous the past few years have been for the Wolverines. Michigan was the subject of a major cheating scandal in football, the hockey program had to fire its head coach because of misconduct found after an investigation into hidden COVID-19 tests and a toxic culture, and the basketball program parted ways with Juwan Howard after his tumultuous, controversial tenure. Dusty May has also been accused of tampering which may or may not ever be proven, but the NCAA claims it will be levying harsh punishments for it.
Oh, and the football program suffered another black eye with the Sherrone Moore affair and subsequent run-in with the law which led to his firing. I won’t even mention “Burgergate” because that’s just a blip on the radar of Jim Harbaugh’s tenure.
Yet, Desmond took all of that and the fact that people have been calling for Michigan AD Warde Manuel’s job, and manufactured some adversity. He shared a message after Michigan basketball’s national title win on Monday that’s just further proof as to why Spartans and Wolverines can never — and likely will never — get along.
With Michigan winning it all in basketball Monday night and hockey headed to the Frozen Four, I’ve been thinking about what it took to get here.
— Desmond Howard (@DesmondHoward) April 8, 2026
The adversity that Michigan Athletics was forced to deal with recently caused many to attack the AD publicly and in secret. Being from…
To sum it up: “Michigan is winning in several sports now so we should praise Manuel for getting the program through adversity instead of calling for his job.”
Obviously those weren’t his exact words, but they may as well have been.
There’s a difference between his mindset (and the mindset of a lot of Michigan fans and alums), and how Michigan State fans think. When the Spartans experienced their scandals (Larry Nassar, Mark Hollis basically quitting because of Nassar, Curtis Blackwell, and Mel Tucker’s sudden firing), fans called for the school to take accountability instead of burying its head. They didn’t attribute Michigan State’s Big Ten title and Elite Eight run to overcoming adversity and you didn’t see any former players shouting Hollis — or any previous AD for that matte — out and saying we should celebrate him and not attack him.
The opposite is apparently the norm at Michigan. Instead of taking accountability and saying “yeah, our program has made some mistakes but we’re glad things are headed in the right direction”, Michigan is apparently cool with turning scandals into adversity.
But hey, that mindset got them two national titles, and maybe a third this weekend. So what do I know? Maybe MSU should start rooting for more controversy and it might win more titles.