The conversation with reporters last month in France began lightheartedly.
Stephen Spanellis, Michigan's redshirt freshman offensive lineman, entertained questions about the decision to shave his long, scruffy beard in favor of a mullet-mustache look.
Then Grant Newsome walked up to the scrum and the conversation turned serious.
"Who's smarter, you or Grant?," a reporter asked the 6-foot-5, 307-pound Spanellis.
That's when Spanellis went in on Newsome, a two-time academic all-Big Ten honoree who won the Arthur D. Robinson Scholarship Award as Michigan's top football student-athlete in 2016.
Newsome graduated in three years with a bachelor's degree in American culture and plans to pursue a master's degree in public policy at Michigan's esteemed Ross School of Business this fall.