![]() Pitt and MSU suffer similar personnel losses and MSU won last year on the road - MSU 21-17. The Spartans simply can't lose to Bowling Green and retain any self respect - MSU 27-13. UAB comes in woefully overmatched, and from what I hear feeling like it - MSU 45-3. His head better be on a swivel because I got a feeling he may be in the sights of tight ends and fullbacks sent his way for a snack.īut, the Spartans will start talking with their actions - the only kind that count - on Saturday against Alabama-Birmingham. There are big concerns, such as how many teams are going to run power sweeps at Jon Misch, the 200-pound linebacker, until he vaporizes. Of course, this is far from a finished product. It's like he's studied MSU inside and out and knows every foilble of the past and is throwing it all in the Dumpster - from too much talk to not enough toughness to unethical shortcuts to star treatment to lawlessness to on and on. The best thing I heard all preseason was on Monday when Dantonio said: "We can talk about it all we want, but it's got to show up on Saturday." That may be a good thing, or maybe Dantonio didn't run them nearly enough to weed out the weak of mind, spirit and body. Maybe he'd lose some talent, but what good is it if the character is corosive? That's got to get old for the innocent.ĭantonio wanted to get guys to quit, wanted the weak, or the "the weeds" as he called them, to leave. Javon Ringer didn't even know why he was running, but he was paying the price for someone's screw-up. He did it again this week during practice when things were going the way he wanted, so he stopped the clock and made the team run. I think he really tried to literally run whatever it is that's in MSU's DNA out of its molecular structure. It is to say that I think Dantonio gets it. That's not to say I'm picking MSU to get to the Rose Bowl. This talk had a genuine quality about it that I haven't detected in awhile. There was talk about proving everybody who picked the Spartans to finish near the bottom of the Big Ten wrong and getting to not just a bowl, but a good bowl.īut, I didn't hear that familiar hollow sound for a change. And at one point, when they kept talking about how this was the hardest off-season ever, how new Coach Mark Dantonio made sure they were pushed to the brink of quitting, I questioned if it was more of the same old same old. It was more about turning running backs into pulp. Percy Snow may have been a man of few words, but nary a one had anything to do with how good he thought he or the team was. ![]() John Miller was one of the best interviews ever, and Andre Rison was a mouth that roared. ![]() ![]() MSU's 1999-2000 national championship basketball team was the same way.ĭon't get me wrong. It was an inner understanding that no one had to be talked into agreeing it existed. I wouldn't call it confidence or bravado. They exuded something that remained unsaid. The exceptions were the 19 teams, which just happened to win championships and are the two best Spartan teams of the last 20 years, in my opinion. I swear, no team in the nation talks about itself and what it's going to do more than MSU. The cover of the 1991 MSU football media guide boasted not one, but TWO, Heisman Hopefuls - Tico Duckett and Courtney Hawkins for cripe's sake. "So and so or such and such and such is going to be so good." "This is the hardest we've ever worked in the off-season." "Everybody stayed in East Lansing all summer so we could work out together." I've been listening to Michigan State players flap their yaps for more than 20 years, and have rarely seen them back up their talk with the walk. EAST LANSING - I would have made my fearless predictions sooner, but I was too afraid.
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