Royal Oak -- As Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio and athletic director Mark Hollis were preparing to meet with the university's Board of Trustees on Monday, they got some support from afar.
Basketball coach Tom Izzo spoke Monday about the tough times the football program is going through, not just on the field -- the Spartans were 3-9 last season, a year after making the College Football Playoff semifinals -- but off the field, as sexual-assault investigations have piled up.
"We talk all the time, you know, both Marks," Izzo said at Beaumont Hospital, where he was meeting with young cancer patients as part of Oakland coach Greg Kampe's "Coaches Beat Cancer" event.