Dantonio made emphasizing MSU football tradition one of his goals for the year, and he has shoved the textbook down his players’ throats. The knock on Spartans teams in the past was that they lacked care, that they were immature and underachieving. Maybe Dantonio understood all that to mean the players didn’t know just how lucky they are.

Maybe he needed to give them something to fight for.

“I think our players are hungry,” Dantonio said before the season began. “When you have tradition, you have a chance.”

One of the ways Dantonio implemented his curriculum was through using an honorary captain each week. In this ritual, Dantonio asks a member from a previous MSU team to speak with the players and guide them throughout the week.

The honorary captains serve as a glue for an MSU program that has consistently come undone under heat.

“The one consistent thing (they say is) that this is a brotherhood – Spartan Dogs,” junior quarterback Brian Hoyer said. “A lot of them have said Spartan Dogs. It’s something you’ll be connected with for the rest of your life, is being a Michigan State Spartan. A lot of them talk about how it was the best time of their lives and playing for Michigan State has meant so much to them.”

The honorary captains also have given the Spartans a little extra bite on the field.

“They say a few things and they teach you about what it’s like to be a Spartan in the past,” senior offensive lineman Pete Clifford said. “It makes you feel honored and it makes you want to go out there and make them proud.”

There will be plenty of former Spartans at Saturday’s homecoming game as the 1957 national championship and 1987 Rose Bowl championship teams are honored.

Former MSU head coach George Perles was a member of both teams — once as a player and once as head coach. While the current MSU team is trying to get to the level those teams were on, they first have to start with winning back the fans. Dantonio has often used Perles’ quote “They all count one,” but Perles said that isn’t necessarily true with homecoming — especially when respect of the fans is on the line.

“You have all the alumni there, wearing green and white and beating their chests. If you lay an egg on homecoming, it’s a tough one,” Perles said. “People don’t know where to take their anger after that, and they usually let it out on the coaches. They all count one, but this one counts one-plus.”

MSU hasn’t fostered confidence in alumni returning for the homecoming game in recent years. The Spartans lost their last two — including an upset loss at the hands of Illinois — and four of the last seven homecomings.

With the team working so closely with past heroes and the program’s history, they know how much damage a homecoming loss could do. They know how much people care.

“It always feels bad when you lose,” Clifford said. “But it feels worse with homecoming because everyone is back watching you and you’re upsetting them. It’s disappointing.”

Senior linebacker Kaleb Thornhill didn’t need to hear any lessons about MSU history — he lives it.

As the last member of the Thornhill legacy — following his brother, Josh, who served as an honorary captain, and father, Charlie — Kaleb grew up a Spartan. His family is MSU royalty. He was trained for the throne, and as one of the team’s captains, he has taken his seat in it.

It was a moment he had waited for his whole life.

“I learned from an early age the importance of Spartan pride,” Thornhill said.

“The tradition has been in my family for a while. It’s coming back strong in Spartan nation.”

Thornhill praises Dantonio for doing a “great job” of teaching tradition. The players have four years to learn decades of history, but they also will become part of that history.

But, in the end, time passes quickly. Soon, their playing days will simply be history.

The tradition, though, will always remain.

“It’s a short time in our lives that we’re going to be playing here,” Hoyer said. “You just have to go out and enjoy it and play as hard as you can every play and every game, and realize that it’s part of a tradition that you become a part of when you play here.”