Michigan State: Fifth in the Nation, Yet Still Second Fiddle to Michigan
Just about every sports team has at one time or another claimed to be overlooked, underappreciated, insulted. Right now, though, few teams can more legitimately claim that the world is withholding the respect they deserve than Michigan State. The fifth-ranked Spartans have amassed double-digit victory totals in four of the past five seasons, and they have ended the last two campaigns ranked in the top five. Last season, they won the Cotton Bowl. The year before, they beat Stanford in the Rose Bowl.
Yet a casual disrespect seems to plague the program. Last December, the College Football Playoff selection committee quietly slipped Mississippi State from two spots behind Michigan State to one ahead in its final rankings even though neither team had played a game since the previous rankings. More recently, prognosticators have praised Michigan State and then mentioned, in the same tone with which one tells a dog he is a “good boy,” that the Spartans’ national title chances are faint because to make the four-team playoff, they must defeat No. 1 Ohio State, the defending champion, in Columbus.
The Spartans’ inferiority complex is compounded — this year and always — by the Wolverines. The rivalry contains the typical resentment of the self-effacing land-grant school against the glamorous flagship state university, and it is aggravated by Michigan’s view of itself as eternal front-runner (its fight song is called “The Victors”) and confirmed by Michigan’s status as the winningest program in college football history.
Even the official name of the Wolverines’ home field must be irritating to the Spartans — Michigan Stadium, as though it were the only one in the state.
Making matters worse, this has been one of the most buzzed-about off-seasons in Michigan history. Jim Harbaugh, a former Wolverines quarterback, has returned to his alma mater as coach after a decade in which he rejuvenated both Stanford and the San Francisco 49ers. Since his hiring, he has been omnipresent, giving quotable interviews, barnstorming the South and even going shirtless in photographs like some Midwestern version of Vladimir Putin.
On Thursday night, Michigan will play Utah on the road in one of the week’s most hyped games. Michigan State will open on Friday at Western Michigan’s tidy stadium.
Through it all, Michigan State has quietly stewed, knowing that even its successes have been viewed through maize-and-blue-colored glasses. At Spartans Coach Mark Dantonio’s news conference on national signing day in February, he said: “We’re not selling hope here. We’re selling results.”
It was an innocuous observation about his program, which, after years of failing to land the most sought-after prospects, was poised to announce one of the best recruiting classes in the nation. But the comment was widely interpreted as a sly insult toward Harbaugh and the team down the road.
“You know,” Dantonio said months later, “it really wasn’t a statement directed at anybody.”
‘Little Brother’ Grows Up
For Spartans players who grew up in Michigan, the rivalry can feel personal. For coaches, it can feel like a burden. When Nick Saban left Michigan State for Louisiana State in 1999, he complained about what he considered a perpetual second-class status.
“We were never No. 1,” he said. “That was always Michigan. It was always ‘U.M. this or that.’ ”
Harlon Barnett, Michigan State’s co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach, played for the Spartans in the 1980s. He recalled the former coach George Perles passing along the lore (more or less historically accurate) that Michigan had once blocked Michigan State’s entry into the conference, and using it as motivation.
“I heard, ‘They didn’t want you in the Big Ten,’ ” Barnett said, adding, “We still ride that thing, man.”
In Michigan State’s first game against Michigan in the Dantonio era, in 2007, the Spartans blew a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and lost, 28-24. After the game, Michigan running back Mike Hart told reporters: “Sometimes you get your little brother excited when you’re playing basketball and let him get the lead. Then you just come back and take it back.”
The phrase “little brother” has defined the rivalry since. Yet in recent years, perception has pushed up against a new reality. Last season, Michigan State’s only losses came against Oregon and Ohio State — the teams that ended up playing for the national title. The Spartans’ defense has ranked in the top 10 nationally in each of the last four years, and it has been the toughest against the run in the Big Ten over the same span. This season, the Spartans expect to be just as good. Maybe even better.
They return the senior quarterback Connor Cook, a likely first-round N.F.L. draft pick; a top-ranked offensive line led by Conklin and center Jack Allen; and yet another group of imposing defensive linemen.
Perhaps the best way to understand how Michigan State has achieved success in eight seasons under Dantonio is to consider the career of one of the players, defensive end Shilique Calhoun.
Coming out of Middletown North High School in New Jersey in 2011, Calhoun was still a project. “I didn’t know much about football,” he acknowledged. “My first year of football was my freshman year of high school.”
Michigan State was the only Big Ten team that offered Calhoun a scholarship, but now most of them probably wish they had. Calhoun, a 6-foot-5, 250-pound senior, was fourth in the Big Ten in sacks in each of the past two seasons. Most projections have him being selected in the first round of next year’s draft.
Dantonio takes obvious pride in Calhoun, the latest in a line of what he and his coaches considered undervalued prospects.
“Darqueze Dennard, from Georgia, had one scholarship offer,” Dantonio said, referring to the former Spartans cornerback who now plays for the Cincinnati Bengals. “Tulsa dropped him. He had none. We came in, and we took him. First-round pick.”
He continued, “Le’Veon Bell, who I saw was just ranked the 16th-ranked player in the N.F.L. currently, had Bowling Green and us.” Bell now plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers and is an essential cog in their offense.
Calhoun might have followed them to the N.F.L. after his junior season, especially after the coach who had recruited him to East Lansing, the defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi, left to become Pittsburgh’s coach. But the new defensive co-coordinators, Barnett and Mike Tressel, had also been at Michigan State for Calhoun’s entire career.
His decision to return for his final season demonstrated the pragmatic basis of Dantonio’s loyalty. According to Barnett, when Dantonio was hired away from Cincinnati after three seasons, he offered everyone on his staff a job at Michigan State.
“I brought an environment here that had been worked on for three years at Cincinnati,” Dantonio said. “We had a plan; we had three years of background. If you were in kindergarten and are now in 12th grade and have the same teacher in your classroom teaching the same thing, you’re pretty proficient at it.”
A String of Big Games
Dantonio, 59, has a championship ring from his final season as Jim Tressel’s defensive coordinator at Ohio State but covets one of his own at Michigan State. This summer, he pointed to Michigan State’s history as a national champion — the Spartans claimed six titles from 1951 to 1966 — when he said, “Last year, we fell short of our goals.”
Cook said he understood that his play at quarterback could be the difference between another top-10 season and something more. The mistakes he made in last year’s loss to Ohio State — a double post to Josiah Price that should have been a touchdown, a screen pass that was batted down — remain as fresh today as they were that night.
A title shot will not come easily. Week 2 presents a rematch with No. 7 Oregon at home. Week 3 brings a potential trap against Air Force and its option offense. The Spartans’ games against Ohio State and Nebraska are on the road, and the skeptics are probably right: A loss in Columbus on Nov. 21 would most likely prevent Michigan State from playing for the Big Ten title, in turn probably locking them out of the national championship playoff bracket.
“Ohio State — I think that’ll be the game that defines how our season ends up,” Conklin said, adding, “Ohio State’s, too.”
Before that, though, there is another game that no Spartan is looking past: the Oct. 17 visit to Ann Arbor.
In the weight room, Michigan State’s shirts have chips on the shoulders. Before one game last season, poker chips were handed out. But there is a difference between feeling you have something to prove and wondering if you are up to proving it. To borrow Dantonio’s words, it is not unlike the difference between selling hope and selling results.
When pressed on whether his team embraced the role of underdog — the word Conklin had used to describe the Spartans despite their No. 5 ranking — Dantonio’s face contorted.
“‘Underdog?’” he said, almost snarling. “We’re not an underdog.”
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