Thursdays are the most eventful day of the week here in Spartan football land. You'd think it would be Saturdays, but you'd also think the Spartans would hold press conferences to discuss football.

Not this season. Not this team.

The memorable Thursdays started Oct. 24, the Thursday junior quarterback Jeff Smoker was indefinitely suspended for violating team rules.

Every Thursday since has been as eventful - full of scandal and controversy.

Following the signal caller's suspension, exactly seven days later, it was Greg Taplin's turn for trouble. The junior defensive end would sit out the thrashing in Ann Arbor - he violated a training rule.

Last week, program officials decided senior tailback Dawan Moss could return to Duffy Daugherty even though the senior tailback had been arrested and dismissed - the news of his reappearance broke, again, on a Thursday.

And so I awoke Thursday morning wondering what the football program had in store for sports journalists.

My answer came early with a "media advisory," calling for a Smoker press conference.

If I were a betting man, I'd place my bets on Spartan Saturdays. You know what to expect following kickoff - four quarters of gut-wrenching, indigestible Spartan football.

I haven't a clue of what to expect on Thursdays. I just expect something I didn't think possible.

And so yesterday, I shuffled my feet inside the Clara Bell Smith Student-Athlete Academic Center's auditorium to join the seemingly scheduled media circus.

As uncomfortable as he's looked in a porous pocket, Smoker entered the spotlight to address his substance-abuse problem.

Clicks of cameras complimented the rolling tapes of 17 television cameras as the junior signal caller nervously rotated in his chair - now, a hot seat.

"This is something that Jeff felt he had to do," athletics department spokesman John Lewandowski said.

Mike up Smoker.

"Football can be a temporary thing and it can be taken from you very quickly if you don't make the right decisions," Smoker said.

"This day isn't exactly something that I've looked forward to but I realized it had to be done.

"I'd like to apologize to my teammates, my friends, my family, the coaches, fans, young kids and everyone that looked to me."

And thus the healing process began on whether his friends, family, coaches, fans, young kids and everyone that looked to him can forgive him for his off-field activity.

"I do realize I'm a public figure and that when I'm outside of this building that I need to carry myself in a manner that I've not been doing," Smoker says. "I feel comfortable about where I'm at now and where my life is headed."

Smoker's life direction no longer seems to be a spinning compass. But he'll be pulled in many different directions before suiting up inside Spartan Stadium again.

He must go the direction of winning back a school he's shamed. He must go the direction of rehabilitation. He must go the direction of maintaining his ability of being a student and player.

"I very much plan on returning," he says. "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to become a Spartan again."

It's going to take many Thursdays. But this Thursday was a start.

Kevin Hardy, State News associate sports editor, can be reached at hardykev@msu.edu.