Couch: Gerald Holmes is driving the healing of MSU's football locker room

CHICAGO – If you haven’t spoken with Gerald Holmes, you might think his emergence as a likely Michigan State football captain is a sign of the Spartans’ lack of veteran star power.

Holmes’ on-field resume is rather pedestrian. He’s never been MSU’s leading rusher or go-to running back. Yet Holmes is here in Chicago representing the Spartans at Big Ten media days along with fellow seniors Chris Frey and Brian Allen, more decorated players at their respective positions.

“I don’t doubt a lick of who I am,” Holmes said Monday, at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place on Chicago’s near South Side. “I’m here for a reason.”

Holmes is here because he’s a healer, a communicator, a natural leader at a time when those three attributes are more important than ever to the Spartans’ football program.

“It comes from being yourself. If being yourself doesn’t mean you’re a leader, then that’s that,” he said.

Holmes now is exactly what MSU needed last season. It wasn’t his time then. Not yet his team. He hadn’t had an up-close look at the issues facing the program. He didn’t know he was so needed.

“It wasn’t super bad. The communication just wasn’t there,” the Flint native said. 

The absence of communication amid a 3-9 season in an easily divisive climate can be a miserable experience. This isn’t an MSU thing. This is a losing thing. A losing locker room thing. A society thing. A lack of leadership thing. So Holmes set out to change it. Old guys, young guys, black guys, white guys, offense, defense — he wanted everyone to have a voice. 

“I started these player-led meetings I have every week where we just come in and discuss all individual problems and I allow the floor to be open to anybody, if it’s a young (guy), if it’s a white guy, black guys standing up,” Holmes said. “So now a person who feels a certain way about that is forced to listen to that guy. You might listen to a freshman say, ‘I’m glad to be here working with you guys.’ That forces an older guy, myself, to understand what he’s talking about.”

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Holmes Monday wore pins on his suite coat honoring his late former teammates, Mylan Hicks and Mike Sadler, one day after the anniversary of Sadler’s death, which began an awful period for MSU’s football program. Holmes is a fifth-year guy. Old enough to know and admire those guys. Old enough to remember better times, including a team culture in 2013 that probably can’t be duplicated.

“Nothing can compare to 2013,” Holmes said of the Rose Bowl season. “That was the best year ever — in life.

“With me being one of the leaders that lived in that time, I’m trying to bring that stuff back here. That year, guys were leaving the locker room late (after practice) from just having long conversations with each other. I’m trying to bring that back in.”

MSU’s veterans — Frey and Allen included — have spent an offseason trying to eliminate cliques and expand friendships. 

“All three of these guys have experienced life at a very great level … and now the other end of the spectrum,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said Monday. “They’ve dealt with everything. I think that brings an added maturity to how they see things. I think Gerald’s done a tremendous job with that.”

The scars of last season have left MSU’s players hungry and humbled and called to action. But it’s never that simple and clean. Last year happened. Until the Spartans take the field Sept. 2 against Bowling Green, it’s still sort of last year. Many of the questions Monday were about a divided locker room and the causes of it. This was the national media’s first shot at Dantonio and Co. since their season from hell ended and their offseason from hell began.

The Spartans might be “moving forward” — this year’s mantra; less catchy than “Chase it” — but there are parts of the past that leave them defensive, including teammates they don’t appreciate be cast in a negative light. Frey, in particular, snapped at the notion politics aided in last year’s locker room divisiveness.

“I don’t think it was a problem as much to the team as it was to some of the media and some of the fans,” Frey said. “Riley Bullough being a (Donald) Trump supporter had no effect on our team at all. And a lot of people give him crap for being a poor leader because he’s a Trump supporter. Riley Bullough’s one of the best leaders I’ve been around in my life. I continue to learn from Riley. I continue learn from him and use his ideas and his leadership style in how I do mine.”

Holmes last month smiled and shook off any discussion on the topic. Those are issues that players are free to bring up in their player-only meetings. 

“The main thing is as long as people are on the same page when it’s time to come work,” Holmes said Monday. “If you’re running sprints next to me, if we’re winning games together, that’s all that matters.”

MSU had leaders before last season that understood this. They had common purpose. Holmes is driven to foster such an environment on this roster.

“There’s a lot at stake,” he said. “We have to win. We have to get this program back where it belongs.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.