Luckily for Nolan Finley, he gets to write as a columnist so he doesn't have to include all the facts.
That freedom was on full display Wednesday when Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley offered readers a sympathetic portrait of Michigan State University Trustee Mike Balow, complete with cheap football tickets, uncomfortable bleachers, and the indignity of watching fellow trustees enjoy complimentary food and drinks in a Spartan Stadium suite.
It makes for a compelling story. Two courageous elected officials, Balow and Rema Vassar, standing up for transparency against six colleagues determined to silence them. Their punishment? Exile from the stadium suite, revoked privileges, and a demand that they sign what Finley repeatedly describes as a loyalty oath.
There is just one problem with that narrative.
It leaves out much of the history that explains why Michigan State's Board of Trustees found itself in this position in the first place.
Most notably, Finley somehow makes it through his entire column without mentioning the independent investigation that found serious misconduct by Vassar and fellow Trustee Dennis Denno in 2024.
That investigation, conducted by the Washington, D.C., law firm Miller & Chevalier, examined numerous allegations involving trustee conduct. Investigators substantiated multiple violations of university policies and bylaws, documented an atmosphere of intimidation and retaliation, and recommended that both Vassar and Denno be referred to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for consideration of removal from office.
Those were not allegations invented by political opponents or disgruntled administrators. They were findings from an independent investigation commissioned by the university.
Among other things, investigators determined that Vassar had improperly involved herself in settlement negotiations involving former business school dean Sanjay Gupta, inserted herself into negotiations involving a donor's NIL collective, and accepted private air travel and courtside basketball tickets from donors.
One of those donors was simultaneously pursuing an arrangement involving university trademarks and an NIL collective.
That last finding is particularly interesting given Finley's concern about donor influence over Michigan State athletics.
Apparently, questions about donors and conflicts of interest deserve intense scrutiny when Balow raises them, but a trustee accepting private flights and premium basketball tickets from a donor pursuing university business doesn't even merit a passing mention.
The investigation also found that Vassar and Denno encouraged personal attacks against former Faculty Senate Chair Jack Lipton and participated in conduct that intimidated university administrators and employees.
Investigators described a climate in which individuals feared retaliation for speaking candidly about the trustees' behavior.
The report was not universally critical of Vassar's opponents. It also found that Brianna Scott had violated the ethics code by disclosing confidential information in a public letter. Scott was censured, too.
In other words, this was an investigation that identified misconduct on multiple sides, distinguished between allegations that were substantiated and those that were not, and recommended consequences accordingly.
Finley's readers learn none of this.
Instead, he presents Vassar's conflict with her colleagues as beginning with her effort to obtain approximately 6,000 documents related to the Larry Nassar scandal.
That account deserves additional context as well.
The independent investigation found that Vassar separately approached the Michigan Department of Attorney General about releasing the documents despite the university's established position, acting outside her individual authority as a trustee.
There is an important distinction between advocating for the release of records and attempting to act on behalf of an institution without authorization from its governing board.
And what happened to those documents?
MSU ultimately provided 6,014 records to Attorney General Dana Nessel's office in 2024. After reviewing them, the attorney general concluded that many had been improperly withheld under claims of attorney-client privilege. That criticism of MSU was warranted.
But the attorney general's review also concluded that the documents contained no new, relevant information about the university's handling of Nassar's abuse, and the investigation was closed.
Finley manages to revisit the controversy without telling readers how that review ended.
Balow's circumstances deserve to be evaluated separately. He was not a subject of the 2024 investigation, having joined the board afterward, and his concerns about the university's revised ethics code raise legitimate constitutional questions.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has criticized the code's restrictions on trustees publicly opposing majority decisions. Those objections warrant consideration, and the university should be prepared to defend its policies in court. But FIRE's position is not the only informed perspective on the subject, something Finley might have discovered by consulting his own newspaper's previous reporting.
On Sept. 11, The Detroit News reported that MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz had publicly defended the revised ethics code, noting that many peer research universities have similar codes of conduct.
Guskiewicz was hardly describing some radical new approach to university governance.
The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, a national organization specializing in higher education governance, specifically identifies the principle of thinking independently and acting collectively as a responsibility of effective trustees.
Its published guidance encourages trustees to raise difficult questions, challenge administrators, and express dissent during deliberations. It also explains that trustees should respect the collective decisions of the governing body when communicating with stakeholders on its behalf.
That distinction is central to the entire controversy.
The university board is not eight independent executives, each empowered to direct administrators, negotiate institutional agreements, or establish university policy according to personal preference. It is a governing body that acts collectively through duly adopted decisions.
And the expectation that trustees support majority decisions is hardly new at Michigan State.
The university's original ethics code, adopted in May 2020, already instructed trustees to think independently while supporting majority decisions and working cooperatively with fellow board members and the administration.
That language predates Balow's election and the current controversy by several years.
The 2026 revisions expanded those expectations and added mandatory acknowledgment requirements and automatic sanctions. Whether those additional provisions cross constitutional boundaries is a question worth asking, especially where they might restrict an elected official's ability to publicly express disagreement. But Finley's description of the code as prohibiting trustees from speaking publicly about the university without permission is a considerable oversimplification.
MSU has argued that its revised provisions reflect established governance practices and are consistent with standards used by institutions such as Wayne State University. Guskiewicz has defended the approach, and the Association of Governing Boards has articulated the broader governance principles behind it.
While those facts do not settle the constitutional debate, they do undermine Finley's suggestion that the code is simply a novel instrument of political coercion.
And while refusing to sign the revised acknowledgment carries sanctions, those sanctions do not remove Balow or Vassar from office, eliminate their votes, or prevent them from attending formal board meetings.
That distinction is especially relevant when Finley compares the trustees to members of the Legislature and local governing bodies.
Elected officials routinely operate under ethics policies, procedural rules, and standards of conduct adopted by the bodies on which they serve. Their election does not exempt them from those rules, although the rules themselves must comply with constitutional protections.
Whether MSU has gone too far in enforcing its requirements is a question that independent observers could disagree on.
Whether complimentary football tickets and access to private hospitality areas are indispensable to the constitutional responsibilities of an elected trustee is another matter entirely.
Finley even relays Vassar's suggestion that the trustee suite functions as a de facto board meeting because university business is discussed there.
If significant university decisions are being made during football games among selected trustees, donors, and administrators, that would raise its own governance concerns. The answer would be to ensure proper deliberation and equal access to official board business, not to treat luxury seating as a fundamental responsibility of elected office.
Then there is Spartan Ventures, another subject on which Finley manages to get the basic facts wrong before raising questions about oversight.
Finley describes Michigan State as having sold a portion of its athletic department to private investors without direct board approval.
That's not what happened.
Michigan State did not sell part of its athletic department. It established a new business structure designed to generate additional revenue from the commercial opportunities associated with Michigan State Athletics.
Spartan Ventures is a nonprofit corporation established to oversee and expand the commercial operations supporting MSU Athletics. The Spartan Athletic Foundation, another nonprofit, manages fundraising and donor engagement. Spartan Media Ventures is a separate, for-profit corporation created to attract private investment and generate revenue through media rights, sponsorship opportunities, licensing, and other commercial activities.
The $100 million investment by Greg and Dawn Williams purchased an 11% ownership interest in Spartan Media Ventures, not an 11% ownership interest in Michigan State Athletics.
The Williamses did not purchase part of the football program, basketball program, or any of Michigan State's other athletic teams. They did not acquire ownership of Spartan Stadium, the Breslin Center, or Michigan State's athletic department. They did not purchase the authority to hire coaches, direct university athletics policy, or govern the department.
They invested in a commercial enterprise designed to capitalize on revenue opportunities associated with those programs. Michigan State retained control of its athletic operations, while the new structure was designed to provide the flexibility to attract capital, negotiate commercial partnerships, and grow revenue.
That arrangement certainly introduces legitimate questions about how future revenue will be distributed, what returns investors can expect, how commercial rights will be managed, and whether the university has adequately protected its long-term financial interests.
Those questions are fundamentally different from the suggestion that a public university sold a portion of its athletic department to private owners.
Finley also leaves readers with the impression that the university's leadership simply created this arrangement without authorization from the Board of Trustees.
The record says otherwise.
On Oct. 31, 2025, the board unanimously authorized an affiliation agreement establishing Spartan Ventures. On Dec. 12, the board voted 5-3 to authorize a strategic brand management agreement with Spartan Ventures, providing another layer of authorization for the broader commercial initiative.
Balow, Vassar, and Denno opposed that second resolution, arguing that they had not received sufficient information about the proposed for-profit subsidiary and its financial arrangements.
University boards routinely authorize broad initiatives and delegate implementation to administrators and affiliated entities. The responsibility of trustees is to establish appropriate oversight, approve matters requiring board action, and hold university leadership accountable for the results.
Whether Michigan State established adequate safeguards and oversight mechanisms for Spartan Media Ventures deserves scrutiny. So do the confidentiality requirements governing trustee access to proprietary financial information.
But an argument that trustees should have been given greater access to the transaction documents is not evidence that the university sold off part of its athletic department without authorization.
Finley has repeatedly blurred that distinction, even though the organizational structure, the board's votes, and the nature of the investment have been publicly documented for months.
He is entitled to question whether Michigan State made a wise financial decision.
He should at least describe the decision accurately.
Finley's discussion of athlete compensation exposes another problem: He makes little distinction between revenue sharing and third-party name, image, and likeness agreements.
Since the implementation of the House v. NCAA settlement in July 2025, participating universities have been permitted to share institutional revenue directly with student-athletes. That money comes from the university's athletics operation, supported by revenue streams such as television contracts, ticket sales, sponsorships, and other department income.
Michigan State's publicly available 2025–26 athletics budget included a specific $20 million expenditure for student-athlete revenue sharing.
That is an institutional financial obligation, appropriately reflected in the university's operating budget and subject to oversight.
Third-party NIL agreements are different.
Those are commercial arrangements between athletes and outside businesses, sponsors, or other entities compensating them for the use of their names, images, and likenesses. Those payments generally do not come from the university's athletics budget and do not count against the institutional revenue-sharing cap. They are subject to separate disclosure and compliance requirements.
A student-athlete can receive both types of compensation, and the university may have direct NIL licensing arrangements of its own. But university-funded revenue sharing and independently negotiated third-party NIL contracts are not interchangeable.
That distinction is almost entirely absent when Finley compares Michigan State quarterback Alessio Milivojevic's compensation to the publicly reported salary of Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff.
Goff plays in a professional league with collectively bargained compensation rules, standardized player contracts, and extensive public salary reporting.
College athletes operate under an entirely different framework, one that now includes both institutional revenue-sharing agreements and private commercial NIL deals.
It is perfectly reasonable for an elected trustee to demand meaningful oversight of university expenditures and financial obligations. It is also reasonable to examine the relationships between MSU, affiliated corporations, donors, and businesses arranging NIL opportunities.
But the fact that Balow cannot publicly identify every dollar an individual player receives, or every private business paying that athlete, does not establish that Michigan State is concealing institutional spending.
The university's responsibilities concerning its own expenditures are distinct from the confidentiality and disclosure obligations governing independently negotiated commercial agreements.
Conflating the two may make for a more provocative column, but it does little to educate readers about how college athletics actually operates in 2026.
Demanding additional accountability does not require pretending the board never acted on Spartan Ventures or that every disagreement over access to confidential information represents an effort to conceal wrongdoing.
Perhaps the most significant omission, however, is the damage years of trustee dysfunction have already inflicted on Michigan State.
When Guskiewicz announced in May that he intended to leave for Clemson, he publicly criticized trustees for undermining decisions, promoting personal agendas, and misusing confidential information. He did not identify individual trustees, and his accusations should not be treated as proven findings against Balow or Vassar.
Still, those concerns formed part of the backdrop to the board's subsequent governance changes and Guskiewicz's eventual decision to remain at MSU.
None of this means the board majority has handled every issue properly. It certainly doesn't mean the revised ethics code is beyond constitutional challenge, or that trustees who disagree with university leadership should remain silent.
Michigan State desperately needs independent oversight, transparency, and accountability, particularly given its history of institutional failures.
But accountability cannot be reserved exclusively for the majority.
It must also extend to trustees who disregard governance procedures, overstep their authority, accept improper benefits, or use their elected positions in ways that undermine the institution they were chosen to oversee.
Those findings are part of the public record, whether Finley chooses to acknowledge them or not.
And readers deserve something more complete than a story about a trustee sitting in the cheap seats while his colleagues enjoy the view from above.
They deserve the whole picture.
