OPINION: Mark Hollis says he's willing to help Michigan State again - should the university listen?
Has one of MSU's most innovative leaders been judged on the entirety of his record - or primarily on the timing of his resignation?
There are leaders whose careers are defined by what they built. Then there are leaders whose careers become defined by the day they left. For many Michigan State stakeholders, Mark Hollis has become the latter.
There is a timely reason to re-examine Hollis' legacy as, in recent weeks, he has publicly acknowledged to members of the media, that he would be willing to help Michigan State again if the opportunity arose. Not because he believes he is entitled to return, but because he still believes in the institution he spent decades serving.
I've been a part of many conversations with Spartans over the last week where the topic of conversation was Hollis and what - if any - role he should/could have once again at Michigan State.
The opinions were all over the place, but - before deciding whether there should ever be a place for him at MSU again - I think it's worth taking a look back at the record that shaped public perception in the first place.
Mention his name today and, for some, the conversation begins and ends with January 2018. The university was in the midst of the Larry Nassar scandal. Public trust had collapsed. The president resigned. Hollis resigned. The timing alone became enough for many people to reach a conclusion about the man.
That reaction was understandable - whether it was entirely fair is another question.
As Michigan State looks toward its future – not just in athletics but across the institution – perhaps it is time to take a fresh look at one of the more complicated chapters in its recent history. Not to rewrite it. Not to excuse institutional failures. Not to diminish the suffering of Larry Nassar's survivors.
But to ask whether history has reduced Mark Hollis to a single moment without fully considering the record that surrounds it.
For those who are interested in a Hollis return, they make one fact very clear - there is a difference between being present during an institutional failure and being responsible for it.
Those concepts are easy to blend together when emotions are raw and they become harder to separate when headlines move faster than facts. Yet they remain fundamentally different questions.
When Hollis resigned in January 2018, Michigan State was entering what would become years of litigation. Every public statement from university leadership carried legal implications. Every interview risked becoming evidence. Every explanation could affect the university's legal position.
Years later, in an interview with Bruce Schoenfeld for Sports Business Journal, Hollis reflected on that period with unusual candor. He said he wanted the opportunity to publicly explain what had happened within the athletic department and "set the record straight." Instead, he said, the university chose to communicate through a centralized legal strategy because of the anticipated litigation.
Whether that was the right approach by MSU is open to debate. (My opinion: it was the exact wrong approach - and I said so at the time.)
What is not debatable is that it left Hollis largely unable to publicly defend either himself or the department he led.
Leadership requires visibility. It requires communication. It requires explaining difficult decisions, reassuring stakeholders, and accepting responsibility where appropriate.
In this case, one of the university's most visible leaders would have been expected to answer questions he often could not answer, due to the university's legal strategy. Fairly or unfairly, silence would likely have been interpreted as indifference, defensiveness, or worse.
That isn't an easy environment in which to lead. Yet that context has largely disappeared from public memory.
So has another important fact: Hollis was never charged with wrongdoing. No investigation concluded that he personally participated in, enabled, or concealed Larry Nassar's crimes. That does not erase the university's failures. It does not eliminate legitimate questions about institutional oversight. But it is an important distinction that deserves to be acknowledged whenever his legacy is discussed.
Perhaps the most important perspective comes from someone few would describe as sympathetic to Michigan State.
John Manly, the attorney who represented many of Nassar's survivors, spent years exposing the university's failures. His criticism of Michigan State was relentless. In the same Sports Business Journal profile, though, he gave his opinion of Hollis.
"I don't have evidence that Mr. Hollis personally knew about Larry Nassar, and I'm not suggesting that he did," Manly said. "There are certain people in this situation who should never be in charge of people again. I can't say that about Mr. Hollis."
Those statements are from someone who spent years fighting doggedly for accountability. They reflect nuance and recognize institutional responsibility while declining to assign Hollis the same level of personal culpability as others.
Tom Izzo has spoken openly about how devastating Hollis' resignation was. He has said he stayed away from Hollis' retirement press conference because he knew it would be too emotional, only to go to Hollis' house immediately afterward to try to convince him to reconsider.
Izzo's perspective is significant because of the relationship the two shared. They weren't simply colleagues. They had known each other for decades, dating back to their earliest years at Michigan State. Izzo has also been clear that he never believed Hollis had to leave. From his perspective, the enormity of Larry Nassar's crimes created a whirlwind that swept up people who had never even known Nassar personally.
Suzy Merchant saw the same thing.
She has recalled standing in Hollis' office and pleading with him to stay because, in her view, he "hadn't done anything wrong." At the same time, she noticed something else: the emotional toll the crisis had taken. She described someone who simply wasn't well anymore, someone carrying a burden that had become impossible to ignore.
Those recollections add important context. The people who worked alongside Hollis every day weren't describing someone trying to escape accountability. They were describing someone who had reached an emotional breaking point while leading through the worst crisis in the university's history.
Nuance rarely survives public controversy. It didn't survive January 2018. Neither did another part of Hollis' explanation for leaving. Many people assume he resigned because he had no choice. That isn't how Hollis describes it. He told Schoenfeld that as he watched survivor after survivor deliver victim impact statements, he came to believe they needed something larger than another press conference.
"They need space. They need comfort. And they need change," he said.
Whether readers agree with that decision is beside the point. The point is that his own explanation was rooted in what he believed survivors needed, not in an admission of wrongdoing. That is a very different story than the one many people remember.
If we're going to evaluate whether Hollis still has something to offer Michigan State, we should also remember who he was before January 2018 became the defining image of his career: he was one of the most innovative athletic directors in America.
The Cold War outdoor hockey game at Spartan Stadium helped demonstrate that outdoor hockey could become a major spectator event. The NHL would later make the Winter Classic an annual showcase.
BasketBowl at Ford Field demonstrated that basketball could successfully be staged inside a football stadium before that concept became commonplace at the Final Four.
The Carrier Classic aboard the USS Carl Vinson remains one of the most ambitious events ever attempted in college basketball.
Phil Knight trusted Hollis to help create PK80, a tournament celebrating Nike's founder that brought together many of college basketball's premier programs.
These were ideas that changed college sports. More importantly, they reflected how Hollis viewed leadership. He understood that athletics wasn't simply about schedules and budgets. It was about creating experiences that inspired alumni, energized fans, strengthened relationships with donors, elevated the university's profile, and made people proud to be associated with Michigan State.
That ability did not disappear in January 2018.
After leaving Michigan State, Hollis joined Dan Gilbert's Rock Ventures. He became deeply involved in efforts to revitalize Detroit, helping shape initiatives surrounding the Rocket Mortgage Classic, and secure high-profile civic events for Detroit, business development, and downtown investment. As chair of the Detroit Sports Organization Corp, he focused on aggressively luring major sporting events, including the city's successful bid to host the 2024 NFL Draft and bringing the NCAA men's basketball Final Four to town in 2027.
In other words, his career did not end; it simply continued somewhere else. Which raises an interesting question for Michigan State. If someone possesses creativity, fundraising ability, institutional knowledge, strategic vision, and decades of relationships throughout higher education and business - and expresses an interest in returning - should one moment permanently disqualify that person from ever serving the university again?
I am not arguing that Mark Hollis should become Michigan State's next athletic director. I am not arguing that every decision made during his tenure deserves praise. I am not arguing that the university's failures during the Nassar era should somehow be forgotten.
I do find myself arguing, though, that institutions owe themselves the discipline to distinguish between collective failure and individual responsibility. Because if we stop making that distinction, history becomes less about evidence and more about association.
Maybe the answer is that Mark Hollis will never again serve Michigan State in any capacity. Maybe the answer is that his experience, creativity, and leadership could still benefit the university as an athletic director, fundraiser, advisor, consultant, or in another role entirely.
Reasonable people can disagree, but that conversation should begin with the historical record, not assumptions that have grown out of one of the most painful chapters in Michigan State's history.
History often confuses proximity with responsibility. Mark Hollis was unquestionably present during the darkest chapter in Michigan State's history. The question is whether the historical record justifies making that chapter the entirety of his legacy. After revisiting the evidence, I'm not convinced that it does.
