Dantonio looks toward future with toughness in mind
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Mark Dantonio began with a slight cough, the effects of what 3 1/2 hours in the cold winds of the central Pennsylvania mountains can bring.
The look on his face? That was the pure frustration of a season’s-worth of recanting the same issues, week after week, with few answers or fixes.
“I can’t coach toughness,” Dantonio said Saturday following Michigan State’s season-ending, 45-12 loss to No. 8 Penn State. “It’s hard to coach toughness. It’s hard to coach effort. It’s hard to coach enthusiasm. That has to come from within every single player on our football team. I believe that any coach can coach it over a period of time, but you can’t coach it in one day.”
The 287 days – 41 weeks, to be precise – will be devoted to re-emphasizing that. Daily. If not hourly.
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Because if 2016’s motto was “Back2Back,” then next year’s should be “Back to Basics.”
It’s not that the Spartans lacked their trademark physical toughness during their 3-9 plummet from the College Football Playoff. Ask Michigan and Ohio State. To make it 11 1/2 games before the wheels entirely fell off and they finally suffered a blowout, they also showed mental fortitude remains. Dantonio went on to express his belief that the players competed week in, week out during the program’s worst season since 1982.
That’s true. To a point.
There is a distinct difference between knowing how to compete and knowing how to win. It’s minute, a fine line. Or, on a 100-yard grid, inches. A phrase every player in Dantonio’s program has heard countless times since the losing started in late September.
MSU’s departing seniors watched the classes above them go 36-5 between 2013 and last season, one in which the figurative inches became literal as LJ Scott reached across the goal line against Iowa to deliver the Spartans’ second Big Ten title in those three years.
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That seems much longer ago than a year. Historic levels of losing can alter the space-time continuum in some ways. A 13-week season can feel like 3 minutes on a roller coaster when you’re winning; it can feel like an eternity in purgatory when you can’t.
Lost with the Shilique Calhouns and Connor Cooks and Jack Allens was more than just their physical gifts and leadership. It was their grit and saltiness that developed during a 2012 season in which many of them – true and redshirt freshmen – watched MSU go from Kirk Cousins and Co.’s success to a team barely above .500 after Cook rescued them in their Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl win over TCU.
Those guys became sophomores and juniors, then seniors. No one predicted the jump to Rose Bowl champions coming the next year. No one would have believed MSU could turn in three straight top-6 finishes. Players used the 2013 offseason to not just develop their talents but also to sharpen their resolve. So this wouldn’t happen again while they were on scholarship.
It’s the same lessons those returning in 2017 need to discover on their own. Because that chip on the shoulder, the one that Dantonio has preached about for a decade, is only created inside a player’s mind and soul.
“Throughout the season, we’ve had our struggles,” said linebacker Chris Frey, who will be a senior come Monday. “But a lot of times, they’re saying, ‘Michigan State’s so young. They’re so young. They’re so young.’ Starting tomorrow, nobody’s young anymore. … I think guys are going to realize, ‘This is not who we are, and we don’t want this anymore.’”
Contact Chris Solari:csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@chrissolari.
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