In the first press conference after the Spartans were officially named as the No. 3 seed in the second annual College Football Playoff, the focus was less on the previous night’s triumph in the Big Ten championship and more on the challenge to come at the Cotton Bowl Classic against Alabama on Dec. 31.
The Spartans will have the next 25 days to prepare for perennial juggernaut Alabama. In head coach Nick Saban’s nine-season tenure, the Crimson Tide have won three national titles. The Tide have played in a New Year’s Six — previously known as BCS Bowl — in seven of Saban’s nine seasons.
Saban coached MSU for five years between 1995-99, and Dantonio served as his defensive backs coach during that time. Because he spent this time working for Saban, some of Dantonio’s coaching philosophy comes from that of the Alabama coach.
“My mind as a football coach is shaped by the people I’ve worked for,” Dantonio said. “Certainly Jim Tressel, who I’ve talked about a lot, but Nick Saban is probably the guy, too, from a defensive system, certainly, and then also from an overall football system. ... You want to be physical. You want to be tough. You need to have great knowledge of what you do. Those are three things that we constantly preach ... those are the three characteristics that I constantly talk to our players about.”
This will be the second all-time meeting between the two schools. The first matchup between the Spartans and the Crimson Tide was in the 2011 Capital One Bowl, when a 9-3 Alabama team starring Mark Ingram and Julio Jones held Kirk Cousins and the 11-1 Spartans to just seven points in a 49-7 thrashing. Dantonio views that game as a necessary stepping stone in the program’s ascent to national title relevance.
“We were 11-1 as we went down there that particular day, and had some turnovers, and it became a rough day as things spun out of control a little bit,” Dantonio said. “With that being said, I think that’s a part of the process here. That was our first game in a situation like that.”
Dantonio sees the Dec. 31 rematch as a chance to show how the Spartans have advanced as a program in the past four years.
“As you move forward, you try and win regular season games in the Big Ten, win bowl games, try to take your program to the next level,” Dantonio said. “Now we get to find out if we’ve grown up a little bit.”
The Spartans have the advantage of playing in the Cotton Bowl Classic for the second year in a row. Last season, when the Cotton Bowl was not a part of the College Football Playoff, the Spartans upset the former playoff hopeful Baylor Bears in the game. Numerous Spartans, including senior center Jack Allen, were glad to hear of the team’s return to Dallas.
"(The Cotton Bowl is a) great atmosphere,” Allen said. “Playing down there is always fun. The hospitality down there is one of the biggest things.”
The Spartans are currently nine-point underdogs against Alabama, but they are used to the underdog role, as this week is the first time all season that the Spartans have been in the top four of the College Football Playoff rankings. Senior quarterback Connor Cook said the betting line will only provide the Spartans with more motivation.
“We love that role,” Cook said. “We embrace being an underdog. It’s kind of who we are, as a program, with a chip on our shoulder. ... No matter if we’re the underdog or the favorite we go into each and every game trying to prove something.”
