Former Spartan Peat Denied Re-Entry To Football Team
A few Spartan football junkies may remember the name Cassius Peat, and those same people were probably very excited from him to join a weak defensive line depth chart ahead of the 2017 season.
Four days from him coming back to join the Spartans, he has been told by the MSU coaching staff not to come back to East Lansing.
Peat was a class of 2015 recruit who was ranked in the top 100 nationally by most recruiting websites and one of the best defensive line prospects in the country. He signed with the Spartans on Signing Day 2015 flipping from UCLA.
Peat was redshirted his freshman year when MSU went to the College Football Playoff. Within a week of the Spartans 2016 season opener against Furman, Peat was granted a release from his scholarship and transferred to an Arizona junior college with the intent to play for UCLA after spending a year in JUCO.
Fast forward to February of this year and Peat had signed a new letter of intent to play for Michigan State in 2017, he never played for UCLA so any transfer rules would not apply. Now just before he was set to re-join the team in their offseason program he is telling the media that he has been told not to come back to East Lansing by the MSU coaching staff.
Talking with the Detroit Free Press Peat said:
“Morally, I didn’t think it was right, four days before I was supposed to report, they just blindsided me and said I couldn’t come... I have respect for them, and I understand it’s a business. But morally, man, as a 20-year-old kid with a family, for them to do that is – I can’t even put it into words, to be honest."
Peat said he was not given a reason as to why he would not be welcomed back to the football program.
He continues:
“Respectfully and professionally, I’m not talking bad on the program. I’m not talking bad on Coach Dantonio, I still have respect for him. Hopefully they have a better year and they get that stuff figured out. I know there’s a lot of turmoil going on.”
Michigan State coaches, including Mark Dantonio, did not return requests for comment from the Detroit Free Press.
According to the Free Press' report Peat plans to visit Big Ten and Pac-12 schools and weigh his options.