All across the country, from St. Louis to Blacksburg and Tobacco Road, change happened this school year.
Past, present and future Spartans felt the impact in their sports, their programs and their leaders.
For some, like Gov. Jennifer Granholm, time was on their side. The state looked past a dismal budget and weak job market to give her a second chance. For MSU head football coach John L. Smith, there were no more chances. "The performance on the field hasn't lived up to what we hoped it would," Athletics Director Ron Mason said at a Nov. 1, 2006, press conference where Smith's firing was formally announced. "It comes time to make a change."
How did the 2006-07 school year change you?
Let's count the ways.
Ice Dream
When MSU head coach Rick Comley took his place on the bench in 2002, he was standing in some hard-to-fill shoes. Since Mason gave up the reins earlier that year, the team hadn't made it out of an NCAA regional tournament.
But it took less than 20 seconds to turn five years of waiting for Comley into bliss, when sophomore forward Justin Abdelkader netted the winning goal for MSU in the national championship game against Boston College on April 7.
Abdelkader said it was a moment he'd dreamt about for years.
"You're always thinking as a kid that you're going to score that game-winning goal," he said after the game. "It's tied, under a minute left. I was just in the right place in the right time."
The Spartans rode sophomore goaltender Jeff Lerg's clutch saves and consistent point output from sophomore forward Tim Kennedy to the title game, resulting in the university's third national hockey title.
"It's an amazing feeling to win this championship for Michigan State," Kennedy said afterward. "There certainly were a lot of people out there who doubted that we could do it."
To hate or not to hate
Nazis, skinheads, the Aryan Nations, the Black Panthers — all hate groups.
MSU's chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom made waves on a campusghout the nation this year. They found themselves placed on a list of national hate groups, along with some of history's most notorious haters.
The Southern Poverty Law Center put MSU's YAF on its annual list of hate groups, making the MSU chapter the first college organization to be so noted.
In November, YAF co-sponsored controversial Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo's visit to campus to speak about illegal immigration, which was disrupted by protesters. This month, Chris Simcox, another controversial immigration speaker, came to campus to speak at a YAF co-sponsored event.
It resulted in five arrests and allegations of racial profiling.
In March, a 13-point agenda written by chairman Kyle Bristow surfaced.
The memo called for, among other things, cessation of funding for all non-heterosexual groups on campus, forcing "Planned Parenthood on Grand River Avenue to leave," the hunting down and deportation of illegal immigrants and creation of a "Caucasian Caucus" and "Man's Council."
"It's pretty disheartening," Heidi Beirich, the deputy director of the Intelligence Project for the SPLC, said of Bristow's memo. "Colleges are places of tolerance and open-mindedness, and this stands opposed to all of that.
"Large chunks of your student body would not be there if Kyle Bristow had his way."
Hitting the road
In today's sports society, professional and collegiate, there exists a high demand for success. A 22-26 record in four years doesn't always please the powers that be.
Just ask John L. Smith.
The MSU head football coach was dismissed after losing all but one of the Spartans' final nine games this fall.
"Overall, what I looked at is, is the situation improving?" Mason said at the November press conference. "Let's not kid yourself — at a level like this, you still have to win games."
A trip to the national championship game and a 149-75 record at MSU, coupled with a $100,000 base salary raise isn't always enough to keep a rising coach around.
It certainly wasn't for Joanne P. McCallie.
The women's basketball coach, after a seven-year tenure at MSU, accepted a head coaching position at Duke.
What will we see in their replacements? Hopefully not a middle initial.
Taking action
In November, a ballot proposal took Michigan campuses by storm. It didn't feature a Democrat or Republican. It featured an idea.
And in the end, it featured change.
Fifty-nine percent of the state's voters decided to ban affirmative action — preferential treatment to minority groups, such as those based on race, class, gender or ethnicity, in terms of college admissions and government hiring.
With the results of the vote, campus minority groups were concerned with the aftermath, but administrators maintain the changes will be minimal and the university already abides by most of the laws.
"I want the campus community to understand there are varying beliefs, values and positions of members of the MSU community (in regard to affirmative action)," said Paulette Granberry Russell, office director and senior adviser to the president for diversity. "We need to treat each other with respect."
She's back
They threw down in the media, in the polls and at the podium. And then they threw down with their checkbooks.
Price was no obstacle for incumbent Granholm and her opponent, Dick DeVos, in November's gubernatorial election. Between the two candidates, $56 million was spent on campaigns — including $35 million of DeVos' own money.
In the end, Democrat Granholm celebrated a reported 56-43 percent victory with U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow.
"We are passionate about transforming the state," Granholm said. "We may not have arrived at the promised land yet, but we can see it."
DeVos made a stop at MSU for a football game, wearing Spartans paraphernalia, but it wasn't enough. Of the estimated 4,581 students who voted on or around campus in the election, the majority cast ballots favoring Democratic candidates. DeVos didn't carry a majority in any student precinct.
Comeback cats
In 2001, Dave Dombrowski could beg, plead and offer a huge contract to most anyone in the major leagues and they wouldn't take it. Then Pudge Rodriguez, Carlos Guillen, Kenny Rogers and Placido Polanco happened. Then Justin Verlander, Curtis Granderson and Joel Zumaya came through the farm system. And then an American League pennant happened.
On the brink of becoming the worst team in the history of the game, a fiery young pitching staff, nitty-gritty defense and a never-say-die lineup of former nobodies became the "comeback cats."
The Tigers capped a 95-67 regular season with a five-game losing streak, settling for the American League Wild Card playoff spot. They defeated the heavily favored New York Yankees three games to one and stunned the Oakland A's in four games to take the American League title.
Tigers TV broadcaster and MSU alumnus Mario Impemba called the Tigers' run last year "magical."
"It may sound corny and it may sound like a cliché, but this is a team that lost 119 games just three years ago, and it's almost magic that they've been able to turn it around as quickly as they have," he said.
Was it a fluke? Stay tuned.
Black Monday
April 16 wasn't a regular school day.
It was the type of school day that made you stop and say, "Could that have been us?"
About 28,000 Virginia Tech University students hit the snooze button on their alarm, rolled out of bed, grabbed their books and trekked to class like any other Monday.
Then Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old English major, opened fire on 32 of his peers before taking his own life — completing the worst school shooting in the nation's history.
The tragedy left the students frozen and opened discussion about the safety of MSU's campus and what measures could be taken to prevent a similar incident in East Lansing.
A university with 10,000 more students and nearly twice the facilities, MSU has almost 200 emergency coordinators in place for such a situation.
In response to the Virginia Tech situation, MSU spokesman Terry Denbow said the university would handle the situation on a case-by-case basis.
"When you try to do emergency planning, you try to think about information that is applicable to multiple circumstances," MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said.
Joey Nowak can be reached by nowakjo2@msu.edu.
