Couch: MSU's latest win over Michigan sets the record straight about Dantonio, Harbaugh

ANN ARBOR – Let me tell you what the savior of a college football program actually looks like.

He turns an embattled program into a national player. He takes his school to heights it never dreamed it could reach. And when his program falls down hard on his watch, just as his world seems to be crumbling, he takes the youngest team he’s ever coached into his arch-rival’s house and reminds us that he still owns them.

“We’ve done it eight times,” Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio said after Saturday night’s 14-10 win at Michigan. “So I don’t know why there’s a lot of doubt.”

Dantonio is a program savior. At Michigan, Jim Harbaugh is not.

If you don’t see it now, it’s a symptom of these times. We all live in our bubbles, retreat to our corners and only hear what reinforces our beliefs. Some believe Harbaugh is superior to all other nouns.

Ever since he took over at Michigan in December of 2014, we’ve heard he was cut from a different cloth, didn’t bleed like the rest of us, saw the game on a higher plane. 

And that Dantonio’s reign over this rivalry would soon meet its rightful demise. It was a fluke. A matter of good coaching, sure, but mostly good timing. Michigan had, by no fault of its own, hired two coaches who weren’t the right fit, Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke, opening the door for Dantonio’s little engine that could.

With Harbaugh in Ann Arbor, Dantonio’s six wins in seven years would simply go down as a cute and brief stretch in the rivalry’s mostly one-sided history. 

Except now it’s eight wins in the last 10 years. It’s four wins in five meetings at Michigan Stadium, which is incredible if you think about what this rivalry once looked like. It’s twice in three seasons against Harbaugh.

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“I’m not going to say anything like (Mike) Hart said,” MSU quarterback Brian Lewerke said Saturday night, responding to a question about Hart’s “little brother” comment in 2007. “Coach D has done a great job of playing against these guys. He’s definitely had their number.”

He did again Saturday, beating Michigan as a double-digit underdog for the first time. The Wolverines were ranked No. 7, a College Football Playoff hopeful, in their third season with the Quarterback Whisperer as their coach. Dantonio, considered an offensive dolt compared to Harbaugh, beat Michigan Saturday in large part because he had a better quarterback — a young kid, a redshirt sophomore, Lewerke.

Dantonio is 8-3 against Michigan. Harbaugh is 1-2 against the Spartans and 0-2 against Ohio State — his two rivals. Whatever the Buckeyes are to MSU, Dantonio is 3-5 against them. Harbaugh took over a program that brought in top 10 recruiting classes twice in the three years before he arrived. He didn’t take over some misfit outpost. Dantonio did that.

A decade later, perhaps we can finally see it. All of us. Not just those who view life through a green-and-white prism — all of us who watched what transpired Saturday. All of us who’ve seen this rivalry play out since 2007, Dantonio’s first season, and since 2014, when Harbaugh became his adversary. 

Harbaugh is a fine coach. He did wonders for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and did the impossible for Stanford. At Stanford, he’s a program changer, if not savior. At Michigan, he’s the latest guy who can’t figure out how to beat the Spartans or Buckeyes. 

Dantonio might have the stronger team this year. Certainly a more well-rounded one than the Wolverines. We couldn’t see it until we saw these teams on the same field. Then it was clear. 

As was this: Dantonio is the standard in this state, brother. 

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