Michigan State’s embarrassment Saturday night was not confined to the football field. Before the Spartans’ game against rival Michigan, their scoreboard operators posted a trivia question about Hitler, complete with a giant image of the Nazi dictator.
The trivia question apparently asked fans, “What country was Adolf Hitler born in?” Then, a smiling image of Hitler appeared with the answer, Austria, off to the lower left side of the screen.
Somebody explain the context behind this for me pic.twitter.com/NnFszUR5Jl
— College Football Report (@CFBRep) October 22, 2023
X users reacted to the shocking display as you might expect X users to respond.
Note too all:
Hitler and basically everything especially Trivia don’t mix! pic.twitter.com/kxuBpWJunl
— Travis Raml, CPA (@RAMLCPA) October 22, 2023
We need a verification that this is real, but if so…someone is getting fired.
— Veritas Libertas (@VeritasLiberta8) October 22, 2023
Haven’t seen Hitler on a Jumbotron since the 1936 Olympics
— Bill Speros (@billsperos) October 22, 2023
What it the actual Hell is this, how much lower can Michigan State get
— Ace Football Analytics (@js_ace_football) October 22, 2023
Anti Jewish message from college campuses across America
— Ray James (@ray_rayj08) October 22, 2023
In a world where Jewish people are being killed and tortured every single day Michigan State puts a picture of Hitler on its massive scoreboard as a wacky trivia answer like he’s a movie star or something. Unbelievable. https://t.co/qcil7gr460
— Matthew Berry (@MatthewBerryTMR) October 22, 2023
The incident reportedly occurred because the scoreboard operators posted a trivia video from YouTube and evidently didn’t scrutinize it carefully enough.
found the source, they were playing a trivia youtube vid pic.twitter.com/Lj46WzZVIp
— Adam N (@agnach19) October 22, 2023
Michigan State apologized for the trivia question and vowed never to use “third-party” scoreboard operators again.
“MSU is aware that inappropriate content by a third-party source was displayed on the video board prior to the start of tonight’s football game,” MSU spokesperson Matt Larson said in a statement. “We are deeply sorry for the content that was displayed, as this is not representative of our institutional values. MSU will not be using the third-party source going forward and will implement stronger screening and approval procedures for all videoboard content in the future.”
Michigan State lost to Michigan 49-0.