Report: Sports Personality Says Spartans Aren’t ‘Real’ Big Ten Champs
Earlier this week, the Michigan State Spartans caught a bit of flack from one local sports media personality. Fox 2 Detroit and Woodward Sports’ Ryan Ermanni went on his sports talk show, “Ermanni and Edwards,” to give his opinion on who the real Big Ten champions were this season.
Ermanni’s post caused one Spartan to reply in a nasty and rude manner, ruffling some of his feathers and causing quite the response from Ermanni. To his credit, he was in favor of the Spartans to make a run in March but has since rescinded those comments due to being upset over a commenter.
“Obviously, Michigan could win the national championship. I wanted Michigan State to do it this year, I wanted Tom Izzo to do it, but no more,” Ermanni said. “You are all insufferable people and I no longer could condone anything green and white or Michigan State.”
Essentially, he is saying that there is more weight, more importance, and more meaning in winning the Big Ten tournament rather than the regular season. Ermanni then goes on to explain his reasoning by saying that the tournament is more important due to its worth to the NCAA Tournament.
“I would rather the Big Ten tournament championship than a Big Ten regular season championship because for me, I don’t watch college basketball all year long, I don’t care,” Ermanni said.
“There might have been two Michigan games that I’ve seen, and I’m being generous. … [I] start watching them in the tournament, and if the [conference] tournaments don’t mean anything, then why doesn’t the NCAA give an automatic birth to the regular season champion?
“The NCAA Tournament hands out an automatic bid to the tournament champion, not the regular season champion. So to say these tournaments mean nothing, I’m sorry, they might not mean anything to the committee or the seeding or anything like that, but it does when you’re talking about an automatic birth.
“When it says Big Ten champion on the bottom line, it says Michigan, that’s who it says.”
The conference tournaments are important. They are important for good teams for bragging rights, and for lesser teams to sneak into the NCAA Tournament. Whoever wins the tournament is playing some of their best ball at that moment, not representative of who the best team was, all season.
Does Michigan’s three-game run in the Big Ten tournament make them the best team in the Big Ten after losing their final three games of the regular season, falling to a No. 5 seed in the tournament, and getting manhandled by the Spartans twice this season? It would be almost impossible to argue that.
Just because all the Michigan fans finally tuned in to watch their team play when nothing else was on television last Sunday afternoon does not mean that the tournament championship holds more weight than going 17-3 over the course of the season.
The difference is sustained success compared to a mini hot streak. The Spartans proved all season that they were the best team in the Big Ten, winning their final seven games, featuring five ranked opponents. A lot of Wolverine bias has come into play for this argument from Ermanni.
As a Michigan alum, it would only make sense for the Detroit news anchor to side with his school, but if roles were reversed, we may hear the argument from the other side, levying that the regular season is more important.
The biggest difference between the two championships is that the Breslin Center will have a banner that reads, “Big Ten Champions, 2025,” while the Wolverines have a banner that reads, “Big Ten Tournament Champions, 2025,”
There is more weight and importance in the banner with fewer words.
