Zack Colman
MSU head coach Mark Dantonio appears to be many things: Tightlipped, dry, dead pan. But Dantonio blasted those character traits at his Monday press conference when discussing the Michigan Wolverines.
It was a journalist’s gold mine. Sound byte after sound byte, quote after quote. Dantonio commented that the media like to “throw fuel on the fire,” but he poured his own brand of gasoline Monday.
“I find a lot of things that (U-M does) amusing,” Dantonio said, catching many media members going into cardiac arrest, let alone off guard. “They need to check themselves sometimes.
“Let’s just remember that pride comes before the fall.”
If anybody knows about pride, it’s the Spartans. Before Sparta fell, it was blinded by hubris — an intense pride that over-inflates egos and leads to massive disintegration. Sparta’s quest was to accumulate more land and territory, but smaller nations grew intolerant of the tyrant and eventually fought back.
Dantonio and his Spartans are going to fight back — he promises that much. Even though Dantonio tried to prevent himself from elaborating, his lips couldn’t stop his words of warfare.
“Let’s just say I won’t comment on that,” Dantonio said, trying to end discussion on Michigan. “As I said earlier — I guess I can’t help myself — as I said earlier, it’s not over. I’m going to be a coach here for a long time. It’s not over.”
But U-M has laughed this game off — literally.
“I was just laughing,” U-M running back Mike Hart said after the game. “I thought it was funny. They got excited. It’s good.
“Sometimes you get your little brother excited when you’re playing basketball and you let him get the lead. Then you come back and take it from him.”
Dantonio didn’t comprehend the “little brother” reference. Well, he did, but obviously he disagreed with it.
But he wasn’t going to let Hart have the last laugh. This is a rivalry, whether U-M will admit it or not.
“Does Hart have a little brother?” Dantonio asked jokingly. “Or is he a little brother? I don’t know, he’s (motions with hand to show that Hart, to be politically correct, could do the limbo while standing up).”
This is the commander-in-chief MSU needs.
Say what you will about not finishing games, about being 5-5, about this being no different than past teams, but Dantonio has his team showing their teeth.
And so is Dantonio.
Dantonio was particularly annoyed that the Wolverines claimed there was no rivalry. He told reporters to go back and watch the film, but to focus on U-M’s sideline while MSU was ahead. Were there signs of boredom, that this game just needed to be over because it meant nothing?
After the game, didn’t the Wolverines rush the field and celebrate as if they just won the Rose Bowl they have been denied however many consecutive times?
“Can you tell my tone? This game is an important game, this game is an important game,” Dantonio said. “So they want to mock us all, they want to mock us, I’m telling them, it’s not over.
“So they can print all that crap all they want all over their locker room. It’s not over and it will never be over here. It just started.”
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This is what we need. Why avoid the topic, as former head coach John L. Smith did. There is a certain degree of hatred (re: extreme) between these two teams.
There’s no need to be tame when talking about a rival, and it’s refreshing that Dantonio sees it this way.
He wants his team to be angry, and the best way to teach anything is to lead by example. Dantonio is angry and so are his players.
“(This hatred is) inbred in me. It’s been there since ’95. It’s 2007,” Dantonio said. “It exists in me, and it exists in everybody who is a true Spartan.”
Next year is 2008. There will be more hatred. “Little brother” will lash out.
The Spartans will regain control from the tyrant.
Zack Colman is a State News football reporter. Reach him at colmanz1@msu.edu.
