GRAHAM COUCH

Couch: No frills, no frets - MSU can see progress in recruiting

In assembling best class of Dantonio era, Spartans found new doors opening to them

Graham Couch
Lansing State Journal
Spartans head coach Mark Dantonio talks about his most recent recruiting class during a signing day press conference Wednesday at Spartan Stadium. It's the highest-rated class of his tenure.

EAST LANSING — If college football programs were judged solely on the excitement they could generate on signing day, Michigan State would have been a miserable operation Wednesday.

There was no late-breaking drama — other than losing a four-star defensive end. No big-time last-minute additions. No pizzazz of any sort.

Just a no-frills press conference with Mark Dantonio announcing his latest recruiting class.

And a staff quietly celebrating progress.

MSU signed its best class of the internet-ranking era Wednesday, even as it slid from No. 10 Tuesday to about 20 — the result of losing one big-time recruit and only signing 19 players. No school with fewer than 20 signees ranked higher than the Spartans, whose classes tend to be smaller because they don’t face the attrition other programs do. That’s coaching continuity at work.

Bottom line: MSU’s nine four-star recruits are a program-best — half of its class — trumping seven four stars each of the last two years. And it kept a class heavy on early commitments relatively intact. After all, it’s not who commits on signing day as much as it is how many of your commits sign.

MSU's grit-beats-glitz mantra won't fly after latest heralded class

But to truly measure the Spartans’ headway in recruiting, you’d have to experience life on MSU’s coaching staff. They see it every day.

“We could always get in the door with ‘Level One’ (Midwest) players,” MSU co-defensive coordinator Mike Tressel said Wednesday. “The higher recruited ones probably leave the door open longer now, give us a chance to really get to know them more than before. And then when you get further away (from the Midwest), that’s when you notice the doors (opening) in the beginning. Sometimes, the higher recruited kids from farther away wouldn’t even listen. Now they’ll at least listen.”

Recruiting battles MSU once chose to shy away from are no longer a waste of time. Seven of the Spartans’ signed recruits had both Ohio State and Michigan scholarship offers. Three of them were offered by Alabama, too.

Dantonio: What matters is what MSU does with its class

“At the beginning, if Ohio State had offered an Ohio kid, we had to make a decision, ‘Do we want to invest time there?’” Tressel said. “More and more we feel that’s worth our time.

“We’ve won a couple of those battles. And when you win one or two battles like that, what you find is other kids are more willing to do the same thing.”

Within the walls of Michigan, that feeling is even stronger. MSU lost out on Detroit King cornerback Lavert Hill Wednesday. Hill instead chose Michigan. He was the first player coveted by the Spartans throughout the recruiting process lost to Jim Harbaugh’s regime at Michigan.

“We feel like if a kid is in the state of Michigan, we have as good a shot as anybody in the country,” Tressel continued. “Whether it’s an in-state school or an out-of-state school, we feel like we should be in the lead.

“At the beginning of our time here at Michigan State, that wasn’t the case. There were a lot of head-to-head battles we lost for a lot of years in a row. Right now, we feel like if it’s a Michigan kid, bring it on, we’ll fight that battle with anybody.”

Get to know MSU's newest football players

MSU’s latest class is a culmination of winning 65 games and three Big Ten titles in six years. It’s beating Michigan seven times since its latest batch of recruits were 10 years old. It’s a product of new facilities, putting the Spartans on par with other elite programs so the people could be the difference.

And then it was about the people. Some of the staff has been together 12 seasons, dating back to head coach Mark Dantonio’s three-year tenure at Cincinnati. That continuity is rare in college football.

“I feel like the young guy (on the staff) and I’m going on my seventh season,” MSU quarterbacks coach Brad Salem said. “You’re seeing kids as a sophomore (in high school) and seeing them through graduation, like (receiver) Aaron Burbridge. … The consistency is really amazing.”

“You look at recruits. You look at what’s here — the head coach, the consistency with coaches, the facilities, really the chemistry in our program. Why wouldn’t you come?

“And we’ve won a lot of big games in the last couple years.”

It’s easy on the first Wednesday in February to forget about winning on the field. It’s easy to get caught up in the day.

“It’s just one-day news,” Dantonio said. “It really is. As much as I hate to say it, we work extremely hard to get to this point, but we’ll be onto something else.”

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

MSU head coach Mark Dantonio addresses reporters during a no-frills press conference announcing his programs new recruiting class Wednesday at Spartan Stadium. It's the highest-rated class of Dantonio's 10-year tenure.