On the eve of the biggest game of the year, Mark Dantonio — a master technician of injecting and streamlining real, perceived or fabricated reserves of motivation to his Michigan State Spartans — shot up the wrong team.
While on ESPN’s First Take to preview a massive a bout with Ohio State Friday afternoon, Dantonio was asked by the show’s host: “We got a win coming tomorrow, right?”
He looked at her and smiled. “We got a win.”
Of course, Saturday night ended differently; the Buckeyes toppled Michigan State in East Lansing, avenged a devastating loss to the Spartans last season, bolstered their playoff hopes, and notched what’s perhaps the biggest win of the Urban Meyer era.
But let’s go back to Dantonio, first, and a moment that was equally uncharacteristic as it was bizarre for the typically calculated and meticulous coach.
For all the idiosyncrasies that make him up — the trademark scowl, the deep voice, the grouchy demeanor while pacing the sidelines — perhaps none is greater than an ability to make Michigan State feel like an underdog regardless if it is or not. If there is a chip to build and put on a pair of shoulders, he one of the nation’s finest carpenters.
“That's been their MO since the day I've known him,” close friend and Ohio State tight ends coach Tim Hinton said Monday.
“There's going to be something that comes out of this press conference, I'm going to guarantee you they're going to put on a bulletin board somehow someway the world's against them.”
It was a mantra that powered Michigan State on storybook season that ran through the then-undefeated Buckeyes, the Big Ten title and Rose Bowl last year. The Spartans embraced their place as a dark horse before ascending toward a place among college football’s elite.
Then at the league’s Media Days in July, Dantonio said his team had gone from hunter to hunted.
“We’ve always been about taking care of ourselves, not looking for entitlement. We’ll get what we earn, every game will be a challenge, it has to be earned," he said.
“Respectability can fly out the window and I understand that … How do we handle success now? We’ve gotten to the point where we’ve done some special things. That’s a good place to be, but also a precarious place to be as well.”
So call it curious when a team — who’s found an identity in basking in detractors and disrespect — would jab at an Ohio State team already seething at a chance for revenge.
“Last year, they got us in the Big Ten championship and that was what we rallied around in the offseason,” redshirt freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett said. “This is what we talked about, being that we were gonna see them again in East Lansing.”
When Dantonio guaranteed a win on national television, it was like tossing a match onto a pool of gasoline.
“We came into this game with a chip on our shoulder,” sophomore running back Ezekiel Elliott said. “No one believed in us."
Added offensive line coach Ed Warinner: “This team was highly motivated team … try to stay in first place in our division to win a road game against a team that knocked us out of a possible championship game last year. There was a lot of motivation in a lot of areas.”
In unseating Michigan State, the Buckeyes took the Spartans’ MO and used it against them.
“I knew that there would be a push from them based on last year that they would be an emotional football team,” Dantonio said after the game.
“So I knew there’d be a pushback. It was important that we be able to respond to that pushback and play through it and come out the other end.
“I think everybody’s always trying to measure up … sometimes measuring up creates that drive and I’m sure that was their MO ... But that has nothing to do with us, that’s them. How we respond to that and how we handle ourselves all has to do with us. That’s coaching. That’s psychology at its finest.”
But Dantonio, who’s by most accounts a master in that realm, seemed to make an unusual miscalculation along the way.
