“It’s a personnel issue as far as when I come back and when I’m full go,” Dantonio said. “I’m going to listen to our doctors, but I am going to ease back into this and do something daily with our football team, and we’ll start at X amount and build back to where it was before. That will at least be the plan as we move forward here.”

Dantonio said he has maintained good health his entire life, and when he suffered a heart attack after MSU’s 34-31 overtime win against Notre Dame on Sept. 18, he initially didn’t know what was happening.

Nevertheless, he said he’s getting stronger every day and wants to turn the attention away from him and onto the Spartans’ game Saturday.

“I was scared, just like anybody would be scared,” Dantonio said. “I really didn’t know what was happening at that point in time. … I really do believe it, ‘Hey, what doesn’t kill you is going to make you stronger.‘”

Dantonio said he’ll have to reassess what he eats on a daily basis, saying that he’s adding more vegetables to his diet.

Jumping back into head coaching duties would be preferable for Dantonio, but he said he’ll need a gradual process before he returns to the sidelines.

“That’s difficult as a coach, but I also think that there are guidelines that I have to follow based on my family, my doctors, my wife and my other coaches,” Dantonio said. “So I’m going to do it the right way.”

With offensive coordinator Don Treadwell handling coaching responsibilities in last week’s 45-7 win against Northern Colorado, Dantonio was forced to watch from home. He believed members of his staff, many of whom he’d spent 10 or more years with, would coach MSU to victory. 

Treadwell said several times last week that he was following the system Dantonio had in place. Dantonio said Tuesday he was proud of the way coaches and players handled the situation. He said men’s head basketball coach Tom Izzo and Athletics Director Mark Hollis in particular called him nearly every day.

“I will say it was a little bit surreal watching the game at home,” Dantonio said. “I had no chips, wasn’t allowed, but it was different because you know, when you see our football team playing and you’re not there and you’ve been there for four years, going on the end of the fourth year, it’s a little bit different.”

While the team didn’t miss a beat with Treadwell at the helm, players said it’s great to have their head coach back.

“It’s great to have him back. It’s great to have things be back to normal and what they were over a week ago,” junior quarterback Kirk Cousins said. “Whether he’s on the box or on the sidelines, we’re just going to keep trying to move forward and put together a great week of practice and a great game on Saturday.”

Dantonio also thanked the entire MSU community and college football fans everywhere for the outpouring of support he and his family received, saying that he will remember the support for the rest of his life. He also hopes to become a more compassionate person and leader because of the process.

“I think the first thing is that, when you get involved in that kind of situation, hopefully it’s going to make me a wiser person,” Dantonio said.

Along with playing a tougher opponent, the team’s focus is even more important and the return of Dantonio will help that, senior linebacker Greg Jones said.

“I think on game day, the presence of Coach D will be more serious than it was last week,” he said. “Guys realize Coach D is going to say something about mistakes at halftime or guys know Coach D wouldn’t really like that.

“Just seeing him around and just seeing him talk after practice and sometimes before practice really gets guys to focus.”