MSU head coach Mark Dantonio has yet to hold a press conference without using a favorite quote from former MSU head coach George Perles: “They all count one.”
Well, Saturday’s 17-13 victory over Pittsburgh should at least count one-and-a-half.
If this were former MSU head coach John L. Smith’s team, I wouldn’t be writing this column (or at least not in the positive manner in which I plan to write it). If it were still Smith’s team, discussion would center around the 11 penalties for 125 yards, the lack of sustained offensive drives, the six allowed sacks and an inevitable fourth quarter crumbling that would have put the Roman Empire to shame.
But this is Dantonio’s team. This is a team with heart. This is a team that isn’t going to give up.
This is a team that has learned to tame Adversity.
Dantonio, his coaching staff and the players have spoken often of this mythical being named Adversity. To the players who staggered in and out of the Duffy Daugherty Football Building year after year during the Smith regime, Adversity was omnipresent and seemingly invincible.
The last time MSU racked up as many penalty yards as they did Saturday was 2004’s season opener at Rutgers, in which the Spartans gathered 147 yards on 10 penalties en route to a 19-14 embarrassment. This week, though, MSU turned potential embarrassment into an important stepping stone to success.
Yes, the Spartans could have gotten frustrated. They could have started throwing blame around, they could have disintegrated faster than Chad Henne’s National Football League dreams and they could have thrown away a chance at getting a bowl bid this season. But they persevered.
They stared Adversity in the face and spat at it.
That is not to say Adversity has been defeated, beaten back into its lair only to return when the season shows signs of slipping. Adversity is always present, but the Spartans have been equipped with more efficient tools to defeat it.
Those tools are a belief in the game plan they employ every weekend, a belief that their coaching staff can do no wrong and a belief that they possess a talent so few people have acknowledged.
Why shouldn’t the Spartans have laid down on Saturday? Why shouldn’t they have given up? Their offensive strategy seemed to be more flawed than President George W. Bush’s (maybe also mythical) exit strategy in Iraq, they received enough yellow flags to make a sizable patchwork quilt and they allowed enough pressure to get to junior quarterback Brian Hoyer that he probably considered changing his name to Jimmy Clausen.
But, ironically, the MSU win is impressive for the same reasons it was disastrous. They dug themselves a grave with mental errors, retaliatory penalties and lack of execution. The fact that they could overcome all of that, though, provided ammunition to attack Adversity.
Last year, Adversity would have consumed this beleaguered group of football players. Smith would have been flabbergasted, at a loss for words. And while Dantonio never says much to begin with, it’s not his words that have players legitimately thinking they would take a bullet for their coach.
Adversity is still there, and Dantonio will be the first to point that out.
The only difference is, this time, the Spartans are armed with weapons to kill it.
Zack Colman is a State News football reporter. Reach him at colmanz1@msu.edu.
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