EAST LANSING -- With 35 seconds left on the clock, Michigan State had the ball on Michigan's five-yard-line up by 17 points.

The Spartans could have taken a knee to end the game, but instead handed the ball to Jeremy Langford, who scored on a five-yard touchdown run in a 35-11 Michigan State win.

After the game, Spartans coach Mark Dantonio and multiple players said the Spartans went for the last touchdown in response to Michigan players planting a stake or spear in the turf at Spartan Stadium before the game. (Watch Michigan's Joe Bolden drive a stake into Spartan Stadium turf.)

"Throwing the stake down in our backyard out here and coming out here like they're all that....We weren't going to cool off of it," Dantonio said.

"It just felt like we needed to put a stake in them at that point."

Dantonio said the act was the latest act of disrespect by the Wolverines toward the Spartans.

"You might as well just come out and say what you're feeling at some point, because I can only be diplomatic for so long," Dantonio said. "The little brother stuff, all the disrespect, it didn't have to go in that direction. We tried to handle ourselves with composure. That doesn't come from the coach, that comes from the program."

Multiple players said the stake went into the ground shortly after Michigan took the field and before the national anthem.

Michigan coach Brady Hoke that he was "aware that something happened but not fully aware."

"I heard that a young man put a stake in the ground," Hoke said.

Hoke said he wasn't surprised by Michigan State going for the late touchdown.

"We have 11 guys out there, they have 11 guys out there," Hoke said. "We're trying to compete. They're trying to compete. That's what athletics is and that's what competition is, so no, not (surprised) in one bit."

Multiple Michigan State players said they felt disrespected by the act.

"They disrespected us right out of the gate," quarterback Connor Cook said. "We weren't having that, so if we had the ball we were going to score."

College Football: Michigan State vs. Michigan 66 Gallery: College Football: Michigan State vs. Michigan

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