Michigan's Dusty May tackling recent football, real-world events head-on to spark dialogue with his team

As a significant figure at the University of Michigan, head coach Dusty May will sometimes have to answer complex questions and address situations on campus that he cannot control.

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One such question came in the form of being asked to share his feelings about the Sherrone Moore situation, who was fired last week after details of an inappropriate relationship with a female staffer came to light, as well as the subsequent legal trouble Moore was in after the fact.

Meeting with reporters during his weekly press conference on Monday, the U-M headman didn’t immediately connect the dots about the Moore situation, instead thinking it was a broader question about the state of the world after mass shootings in the United States and Australia rocked the news headlines over the weekend.

He had a chance to take it all in and think about the position he’s in.

“You know, to be honest, I thought you were going to ask about the school shootings,” May said. “And when you put things in perspective, I’m coaching a child’s game every day. There’s some real-life stuff happening across our planet and our globe. And I think the football stuff, there’s obviously some poor decisions made across the board. It is what it is. Everyone involved is a human being, and every decision impacts other human beings.

“I pray for the families that are impacted and their lives and their children are impacted. I don’t really have anything other than to say that. I don’t have the solutions to a lot of the world’s problems, but man, if we just all tried to be better human beings and better world civilians and whatnot, I think we’d all have a much greater impact. So that’s really about it.”

May was asked whether he planned to address the broader scope of recent events, including those involving the football program, with his team, and it appears that work has already been done.

Even though he’s been hired to coach basketball and not necessarily focus on current events, impacting and helping shape his players into men is equally important to him and his staff.

And sometimes that means facing the complex topics head-on.

“Obviously, the shootings impacted one of our players, and he was shook up,” May said. “Man, I felt bad that we were so focused on beating Maryland because it’s such a tough, tough thing whenever that happens. It just seems to be happening more frequently. I don’t know if it is or not. But a lot of times, things have always happened, and with the media coverage now, it’s just in front of us.

“Even the stuff across campus. We’re trying to, just like as parents, we’re trying to help develop independent thinkers and people that look at all issues from not only their own set of glasses, but also the glasses from everyone else around. We’ve talked about all this stuff. We have very open, honest, transparent conversations in our locker room. I think when you have a group that loves each other and a staff that loves our players as much as we do, we want them to always be thinking short-term and long-term. Most of our conversations are in the locker room. We like to keep them in the locker room.”