MSU AD relives Dantonio hiring in Forbes essay

EAST LANSING – “I will never forget the look of panic in Mark Dantonio’s eyes.”

That’s how an essay written by Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis and published this week on Forbes.com began. It continued with a description of Dantonio, MSU’s football coach, and MSU men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo trying unsuccessfully to save a young man’s life in a hospital operating room – then informing his wife that he was gone.

She “burst into tears, her body collapsing lifelessly into their arms,” Hollis wrote, but luckily for all it was just a simulation.

“What It Means To Be A Michigan State Spartan” is the title of the piece, co-authored by sports agent and Rutgers sports law professor Jason Belzer, and Hollis describes why he values that and other team-building exercises, such as having his coaches work for a day at the Big Ten Network or on a General Motors assembly line.

Dantonio: What matters is what MSU does with its class

“The equation is simple – if our coaches participate in just one training simulation every year, it will take up a single eight hour work day,” Hollis wrote. “Our 19 head coaches will work well over 60,000 hours for us this year. Therefore, if our training efforts result in just a 1% increase in their overall performance, our program has gained the equivalent of 600 hours of productivity.”

Hollis also gave insight on the hiring of Dantonio, which started with a pool of about 50 candidates. MSU analyzed each coaching change in college football over the previous 20 years, and each coach was measured against 40 variables, such as whether he was an alum of the school or previously a coordinator.

“In the end, only one candidate was left standing – Mark Dantonio,” Hollis wrote. “Not only did he have exactly the type of background and credentials we were seeking, but he was also in perfect alignment with our core values and department ethos. Indeed, within just the first few minutes of sitting with Mark, I was certain that he was our guy. He had this amazing aura of confidence around him; he made you want to do better, to be better just because you were in his presence.

“I remember thinking that I had only met one other person during my life that was like that, and that was Tom Izzo. Mark Dantonio and Tom Izzo don’t just fit Michigan State culture, they are Michigan State culture.”