By Jeff Moss

DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com

September 26, 2014

Nine months ago today, Michigan State Spartans linebacker Max Bullough was suspended by Mark Dantonio before the biggest game of his entire career. And until this afternoon, the mystery of WHY Bullough was suspended had gone unsolved.

We went through the NFL Combine, the NFL Draft and Bullough eventually signing a practice squad deal with the Houston Texans without discovering the nature of the transgression that cost him a chance at playing in the Rose Bowl.

Joe Rexrode of the Detroit Free Press never uncovered the real story. Matt Charboneau of the Detroit News didn’t bother to tell us why a member of MSU’s football royalty wasn’t allowed to play in a game that had been a lifetime dream of the Spartan defensive standout.

All the while, the number of people who knew why Bullough was given the harsh punishment had grown exponentially since that Boxing Day announcement as he obviously had to spill the beans to every NFL team during his interviews at the combine in Indianapolis.

Until now, all we knew for sure is that Bullough’s suspension wasn’t related to an NCAA violation, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request.

So why did Max Bullough miss the Spartans’ BCS victory over the Stanford Cardinal?

Well, thanks to the DSR’s East Lansing connection, we can now let you in on the secret. Max Bullough was suspended by Dantonio at the REQUEST of his family. As you probably know, Max’s father, Shane, was a linebacker at MSU and his grandfather, Hank, lined up as a guard on the Spartans’ 1954 winning Rose Bowl team.

Why did the Bullough Family ask Dantonio to suspend Max for that HUGE game? It would appear that the week before Christmas, an intoxicated Max got into a fight with a former high school teammate (who was also inebriated) with the former teammate on the business end of an incredible beating.

The source went on to say that the Bulloughs paid the medical bills of the ex-teammate (not sure if a cherry was put on top of that sundae or not) and did everything within their power to make sure it didn’t get into the press. The price for Bullough was missing the Rose Bowl. One wonders if Dantonio would have taken this action without the family’s prodding, especially given Dantonio’s fairly lax style of discipline (just like about 99% of Division I football coaches).

The bizarre part of this story is that the truth is fairly innocuous. Kids (especially drunk athletes) get into these sorts of fights all the time. Why not come clean instead of letting the Internet message boards run rampant with stories of steroid abuse or something of the Brendan Gibbons variety?

So that’s the story. It’s not very sexy, but now ya know. We will update you further when we find out where Jimmy Hoffa was buried or why Adam Oates was traded by the Red Wings.