Mark Dantonio (Screen shot from Detroit News video)
Mark Dantonio (Screenshot from Detroit News video)
After six weeks of silence, Michigan State University football Coach Mark Dantonio met the media in East Lansing to address the sobering issue involving three players who are the focus of a sexual assault investigation.
“I think by (not talking about football), I hope everybody understands how serious that we are taking this relative to our football program and what we’re trying to do," Dantonio said, according to a report by Colton Wood of The State News. "I hope everybody understands that it’s not business as usual — that everything that we’ve done has been done collectively.”
All three players, who have not been identified, have been suspended and removed from campus housing. Staff member Curtis Blackwell was also suspended with pay. The case is being reviewed by the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office.
“This is an extremely challenging time for all of us,” Dantonio said. “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s impacted our program from how we do business on a day-to-day basis with (the media) to how we do business internally, how our players are interviewed to access to our spring practices to everything we’ve done and that’s because of the process that we’ve been involved in.”
"My goal in coming here was to always foster a program where there was accountability, there was integrity and that there was class in everything that we tried to do from winning to how we lost on the football field — everything involved,” Dantonio said. “And that will remain in place as we move through this.”