Ferris State football coach gets suspension for the most ridiculous reason

Ferris State football has been a powerhouse at the Division 2 level for years now and the Bulldogs have Tony Annese to thank for that.

Annese has coached 10 seasons at Ferris State and has compiled a record of 115-17 to go along with back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022. He has turned this program into an absolute powerhouse and if he’s not careful, he might just get a call from a Division 1 team looking to contend for national titles.

But first, he has to deal with the consequences of, well, his team celebrating winning its second straight national title.

According to FootballScoop, Annese has been suspended for a future playoff game because a couple of his players were smoking cigars after winning the national title this season and they took decorative Ferris State stickers off the walls as mementos for the elite achievement.

Smoking tobacco on a high school campus (where the title game was held) was a violation and obviously taking the stickers (NCAA property) was another issue. Both seemed harmless.

The NCAA came down hard on Annese for these ridiculous violations.

The NCAA’s punishment for Ferris State football is a joke

I get that the NCAA is trying to make sure things like this don’t happen again, but imagine if Nick Saban’s team smoked cigars in an area where tobacco was prohibited after winning the national title. It wouldn’t bat an eye.

We have programs like LSU having former players come on to the field to hand out money to players after winning the national title in the pre-NIL era or Kansas shooting a money gun at their preseason basketball scrimmage and no one in the NCAA batting an eye.

Giving a Division 2 coach a playoff game suspension for a harmless act that every team would do is actually insane to me.

It could end up costing Ferris State a playoff run next year.

It’s time for the NCAA to stop playing favorites.