This Is Why You Can't Have Nice Things

It's doubtless that you've heard about the bit of trouble they had up at Cedar Fest in East Lansing over the weekend. Of the 52 arrested, 28 were MSU students, as were half of the 48 ticketed by the officers. We've already heard the usual excuses that it wasn't the students who were really at fault, that mostly it was other people looking for trouble. Still, we feel comfortable in calling this a Michigan State riot. Let's take a look at the board:

We're using the '89 basketball title as the last time a riot broke out at Michigan. We know there was also some sort of disturbance following the '93 loss in the title game, but I don't have any numbers on that (For the record, that would still have us at riot-free days). For Ohio State, there were only 15 arrested following the BCS loss, but 10-12 fires were set, so your mileage may vary on that one. If you want to be more generous, we know they breached the 40-arrest barrier following the '06 UM-OSU game, which would put them days from their last riot.

We do have to give some credit to Little Brother. We don't think we'd take a loss in the Final Four of the Women's NIT quite that hard.

Static numbers from April 9, 2008:

Days Since Last Riot
Michigan:	6946
Ohio State:	93
Michigan State:	4

Well, It Wasn't Quite 2002

Despite the insistence of OSU president Karen Holbrook, not all was calm and peaceful in Columbus on Saturday night. Some 40 fires were set and 38 arrested, the Detroit News reports. The Akron Beacon-Journal runs a headline of "Buckeye Fans On Good Behavior" despite it. The Columbus Dispatch ignores the fires entirely. We here have come up with a handy way to compare three Big Ten universities' proclivities toward rioting with just a little of the old JavaScript.

*For our purposes, a riot is any large public disturbance that results in the destruction of property.

The last Ann Arbor riot was following the 1989 NCAA basketball tournament victory, which resulted in broken windows and tear gas on South University. The last MSU riot was following their Final Four loss in 2005. The last Columbus riot was Saturday night. Car flipped == riot.