The Spartan Statue at Michigan State endured an attack by water balloons filled with blue paint, a small sign of the tremendous energy generated by the face off between the Michigan State Spartans and the Michigan Wolverines. How to direct this competitive energy into positive channels? For example, Ryke's Bakery in Muskegon has a cookie poll, with Spartans & Wolverines competing to buy the most cookies. However, the cookie poll isn't powerful enough to contain a rivalry between two communities numbering millions. What could be big enough short of the Football game matchup itself? Titanic energies are involved here; it can be said that the entire K-12 education system plus the Freshman to Doctorate track was energized by these sports rituals.
That said, in 1982, I helped a crew of people place a woman we didn't really know on the shoulders of Sparty after Two AM so we could watch her chug a beer up there. A year later, I was a tour guide saying each time we passed, "The Spartan statue is the tallest freestanding ceramic statue in the world". Freestanding? What if that ceramic waist had cracked and dumped our funny loving new acquaintance head first in the concrete?
We had no cameras so there's only a dim memory of this event. And thank goodness as law enforcement quite rightly searches social media pictures for clues. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out on this act of Freshman stupidity.
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