Michigan State has Quietly Secured the Future

Michigan State head football coach Mark Dantonio has received a contract extension, one additional year, and pay raise, from 682,905 dollars to two million dollars in base pay.  In typical Spartan fashion, the move received little notoriety despite the impact it carries.  Dantonio is the most underappreciated college coach of the last decade.  His work as the headman at Cincinnati and Michigan State is equal to any other coach during the same span, save perhaps Nick Saban.

Dantonio has resurrected a Michigan State program that was in shambles following the cartoonish reign of John L. Smith.  Sparty had regained his rightful perch in the national discussion under Saban but the program could not sustain Saban’s success.  Dantonio has righted the ship in East Lansing, which is easier said than done.  Michigan State possesses the resources to field a top ten-team year in and year out, however, the arms race that Michigan and Ohio State have embarked in can easily swallow a program no matter how prominent it is, that means you Penn State.

Rather than fixate on what he does not have Dantonio has recruited well and coached better.  The 2014 Spartans were a testament to this.  Darqueze Dennard, Max Bullough, and Connor Cook are talented players.  Yet anyone that watched Michigan State’s loss to Notre Dame knows that this team improved tremendously.  Michigan State was stagnate for stretches of that game and allowed the Irish to run the ball effectively during crucial stretches of the second half.  By the time Stanford faced Dantonio’s squad in the Rose Bowl, these fatal flaws no longer existed.

           Dantonio’s record at Michigan State is 64-29 with a 38-18 mark in Big Ten play.  In seven seasons in East Lansing Dantonio has averaged nine wins a year.  Michigan State has recognized the caliber of their coach wisely paid him accordingly.  ESPN did not trumpet this contract extension but they should have done so.  The landscape of the Big Ten is changing and Mark Dantonio is leading the way wearing Spartan green.