Spartans Have Golden Opportunity To Put “Arrogant Asses” In Their Place

I’m telling you, I don’t know what’s happened to football coaches names anymore. They’ve gone and gotten themselves called things like Mike and John and Pat and Mark and Rich.

Pshaw!

Don’t they know that properly-named football coaches answer to Knute and Bo and Woody and Bear? Or Biggie and Duffy?

Certainly not Darryl.

Thirty years ago, there was a Darryl in our midst; twenty years ago, he faded away, and mercifully so.

But Darryl Rogers made a mark around these parts. Better put that more often than not, he left a mark.

Duffy was gone in 1978 – Duffy Daugherty, that is, the head football coach at Michigan State University. He retired in 1972 and gave way to the kind but bland Denny Stolz. The lineage went Munn to Daugherty to Stolz: Biggie to Duffy to Denny. Not a Mike or John or Pat in the group.

After Denny proved mostly ineffective – including managing to get the football program placed on probation – he was swept out the door and this dude from small California schools like Fresno and San Jose State came eastward to coach the Spartans: Darryl Rogers.

No one knew much about Darryl. Quickly, though, it was evident that a physical quirk forced him to talk out of one side of his mouth, literally. Eventually, we’d discover that a character flaw meant that he talked out of both sides, figuratively. But I digress.

Rogers came to East Lansing in 1976 and coached two mostly bland years. Then the Spartans came alive in 1978. One of their stars was a bombastic, caustic receiver who also was pretty good at baseball: Kirk Gibson.

Yet the Spartans were still losing football games again when the 1978 season began. Ready or not, they were on a collision course with their in-state rivals, the Michigan Wolverines, for a tilt in mid-October. The game would be played in Ann Arbor. The usual posturing began as the game drew nearer. Then Darryl opened the good side of his mouth and called the folks from U-M “arrogant asses.” Not that he was lying or anything.

The comment caused a low boil on Michigan’s campus, which grew to a rolling one as Saturday approached. The Wolverine faithful – the folks that Rogers had called, in so many words, over-confident posteriors – couldn’t wait to see what their team would do to MSU. The Spartans were annual victims to the Wolverines. They were beaten down by U-M in Rogers’s first two seasons. And MSU was 1-3 in ‘78 when Rogers made the remark. The series had taken on an almost Harlem Globetrotters-Washington Generals persona.

Rogers led his Generals/Spartans into Michigan Stadium, fresh off losses to big-time football programs USC and Notre Dame. Over 101,000 over-confidents sat on their posteriors, waiting for the slaughter.

Except that when the day was done, the Spartans/Generals had whipped Bo Schembechler’s boys, 24-15. In Ann Arbor.

Rogers: Hard to tell if he’s packing or unpacking

Rogers’s team kept right on winning. They wouldn’t lose another game all season, in fact, speeding to the finish line with an 8-3 record, including 7-1 in the Big Ten – co-champions of the conference with … Michigan! But because of Denny Stolz’s little probation, the Spartans were banned from appearing in the national polls or any bowl game. Despite knowing there wasn’t any carrot at the end of the stick, MSU still kicked everyone’s ass in the Big Ten – including the arrogant ones from Michigan.

The Spartans faltered in 1979, and that’s when Darryl Rogers revealed that he could, indeed, talk out of both sides of his mouth after all. Rumors started to swirl that Rogers, after a few seasons in the Midwest, was itching to get back to the Pacific time zone. Arizona State University was courting him. It was reported.

Rogers said no. He kept saying no. Right up to the moment, almost, that he hopped a plane for Arizona and was introduced as ASU’s new coach. It was behavior that would be repeated five years later, when he would deny to the ASU folks that he was about to bolt to the NFL to coach the Detroit Lions. He pulled the same stunt – managing to work both sides of his crooked mouth before ending up in Pontiac, hours after denying that he would coach the Lions.

Michigan State has a great opportunity this Saturday to kick some over-confident posterior, when said rear ends are down and out. The 6-2 Spartans will invade Ann Arbor to play around with the 2-5 and almost-1-6 Wolverines. This time, MSU is Harlem and U-M is Washington. Or so you would think.

Two things are certain in October in this state: the leaves fall, and so do the Spartans. It’s becoming an annual tradition: MSU starts fast, then fades. They raise hopes, then crush them. This year, a 6-1 start turned sour when the Ohio State University barged into Spartan Stadium and manhandled the Spartans, 45-7. That loss had a familiar odor to it: that of impending doom.

Michigan’s program is down. They haven’t even been able to handle the likes of a mediocre MAC school, Toledo, in their own Big House. Penn State toyed with them before racing away like a gazelle. This is, by far, the worst Michigan team that MSU has played in decades.

Yet it won’t surprise too many people if the Spartans lose Saturday – not true football historians, anyway. MSU has perfected the art of spoiling promising seasons for themselves.

Spartans coach Mark Dantonio is a nice man, by all appearances. Definitely not one to create bulletin board fodder with accusations of being arrogant or posteriors. Or both. He’s smarter than to think his team has this one in the bag, even if they do.

Besides, his name is Mark and his counterpart is named Rich. That’s not a rivalry, that’s a business lunch.

Let’s see if the Spartans belch it back up, once again.

MSU’s Revolving Door Must Stop With Dantonio

The words were strongly prophetic, but considering who was speaking them, they were also sopping wet with irony.

“We need to build stability here, instead of changing coaches every gosh darn three or four years.”

The speaker was former MSU football coach John L. Smith. And he spoke them to me, over a telephone, for a preseason, published profile prior to the 2006 season.

Well, here it is 2007, and right on schedule, the Spartans have a new football coach — as they do every gosh darn three or four years.

Stability, Smith’s word, has been hard to come by in East Lansing ever since George Perles hung them up after the 1994 season. Nick Saban, awash in rumors he was NFL-bound, lasted from ’95-’99, but they were five distracted years — with annual speculation about his fleeing to the pros. Then, after all was said and done, he took his whistle and chalkboard to LSU. The NFL would have to wait. Bobby Williams was a disaster from 2000-02. Then Smith, despite a denial on national TV, was named coach in early 2003. His reign lasted four seasons, but they were pock-marked with player behavioral problems and, in bottom line fashion, more losses than made alumni and administration comfy.

So here comes Mark Dantonio, a former Spartans assistant and fresh off three relatively successful years at Cincinnati. And here’s hoping he’s given more than the token 3-5 years to turn things around.

If you look at the history of college athletics, success is rooted in there not being a revolving door in the coach’s office. Unlike the pros, where “quick fixes” can be attained via free agency or trades or high draft picks, it takes time to build at the college level. There’s recruiting and teaching and weeding out the problem children, and more recruiting, and momentum that needs to be gained and support that needs to be garnered. It just doesn’t happen in two or three years.

Now, this isn’t to say that MSU erred in releasing Smith, who at times acted the fool and was mocked more than he was respected by the media, often times. But if the powers that be, i.e. AD Ron Mason and his bosses, feel that they’ve learned from past transgressions and gotten it right with Dantonio — and so far college football observers think that they have — then give the man time. REAL time. Not four years. Not five years. Barring scandal or frequent court appearances by players, give Mark Dantonio a full six years before properly evaluating his performance.

In Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan has employed three head coaches since 1969. Three. The Spartans do that in a decade. Let’s flip it around. In basketball, MSU has stability. Tom Izzo has been there for over ten years. Meanwhile, the Wolverines have struggled on the court, and coaches have come and gone frequently since Steve Fisher was fired in 1997. Which program do you suppose has been the one going to Final Fours and getting the best recruits?

Ahh, recruiting. Today’s high school athletes aren’t hayseeds. They know what’s going on. And many of them have folks advising them who also know what’s going on. And a recruit commits not to a school as much as a coaching staff. So when they see the silver whistle being passed to and fro, like a hot potato, it may be off-putting.

I have no idea if Mark Dantonio is the right guy for MSU, though there’s evidence to suggest that he is. But I’m not paid to make that decision. The due diligence has been done, the interviews were carried out, and the hire was made. MSU has secured their next football coach. Now let him be.