MSU an elite program?????
http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=961670
read pretty interesting how one good year makes you and elite program huh
The author never makes the claim that MSU is an elite program. All he is saying is that Dantonio has them headed in the right direction and they COULD become an elite program if they continue on the path that they're on now. Truth be told, MSU is going to be better than most in our fanbase would care to admit. Under Dantonio, they have a chance to be a perennial top 25 team and challenge for Big Ten titles every other season or so.
at dantonios answer he claims that there is no doubt that MSU will contend for championships not that they have a chance which they do but there is certainly a doubt with the loss of Javon Ringer
PS dont forget to read about Charlie Weis hahahaha
Javon Ringer is one player. Running backs aren't the hardest position to find a replacement. I expect more consistent QB play from them over the next couple of seasons with Nichol & Cousins. I wouldn't be surprised if they mix in some spread formations to utilize Nichol's scrambling ability.
every other season? Not sure about that. Could I see them having a top big ten team every 3-4 years, but I dont think they can sustain a spot up with OSU and hopefully Michigan (maybe PSU/ Iowa?) on a year in and year out basis. Who knows though, I could be wrong.
program it says they will if they continue in this direction
Once we start kicking their ass on a regular basis again this sort of talk will die down. I would be behind the " a strong MSU is good for the Big 10 and for UM" argument if I didn't have to interact with a half dozen or so Sparty on a regular basis. Their insolence during this interregnum period has forever sullied their image in my eyes. He's done a very good job......by Sparty standards. At an elite school, he would still have a lot to prove. His signature victory is over the worst Michigan team ever, by record. Absolutely pathetic.
"His signature victory is over the worst Michigan team ever, by record. Absolutely pathetic."
Dantonio's biggest victory so far was the game against PSU in 2007. That was a huge statement game.
If you're sticking to last year, the win over Michigan was great for many reasons, but the Iowa and Wisconsin wins were arguably more "signature" victories. Those were games that would have been sure losses under the previous staff.
Iowa and Wisconsin choked those games away so hard JLS would have been proud.
Brett Bielema was very JLS like in the last few minutes of that game.
Aside from the '06 game at Northwestern, MSU was never tough enough to handle those kind of games.
Wisconsin choked just as hard against UM, too. Some UM fans were proclaiming it a "resume win":
http://blog.mlive.com/hugeblog/2008/09/richhater_is_right_about_michi.h…
And under JLS we would have still found a way to lose, despite Iowa or Wisconsin's best efforts to throw it away. MSU's always had talent (not top-tier talent, but at least bowl-game-almost-every-year talent); the problem is that the team's been utterly dysfunctional. If Dantonio did nothing but make the team equal to the sum of its parts and maintain the level of recruiting, it would be enough to get to bowl games on a regular basis and New Year's games at least occasionally. But he's also bringing in more talent than JLS did, pushing the ceiling a little higher.
Will MSU become an elite program? I don't know; there's too much yet to happen before that can really be considered. (The Saban days were before my time, but I'll bet the same was widely said before he jumped ship, and we all saw how that ended.) But it's pretty clear that things are headed in the right direction for now.
Ok so squeaking by with a victory against an unranked Penn State team at home is his signature victory. Much better.
Charlie Weis' signature win is a loss.
Are you panicking? I think you're panicking.
A strong MSU wouldnt have the national appeal of a strong PSU program... Sparty is just not that interesting to anyone outside of EL and South Bend....
Michigan State will turn into Iowa circa 2002-05.
That's basically what we've been for the last 8 years or so (up until last year, of course).
Except that we consistently finished 1st or 2nd in the B10 during that stretch(maybe 3rd occasionally), while genius Ferentz was only able to do that (first place) twice in that span.
Um, that's actually pretty freaking good for Iowa to win at least a share of the the Big Ten title twice in a four year span ('02-'05). Their record and what they accomplished in that 4 year span is close to what we've been as a program since the 2000 season.
State will no doubt be better under Dantonio. But is that really worrying? No. They always have been and always will be little brother. I'm looking forward to some of the games over the next few years. Relax all, State getting better isn't and shouldn't be a concern to us.
MSU is improving, but it shouldn't concern UM fans too much.
My belief is that Dantonio is relying too much on instate players, and that the ceiling for a team with too many cold-weather players is to be at the top of the little eight. I like what Dantonio is doing, and do think that they can become a perennial three or four-loss team, and beat UM more than their usual three out of ten the last twenty or thirty years.
BUT, I don't think they will catch or eclipse the UM program anytime soon, nor will the catch PSU or OSU. If they can slide ahead of Wisky, Iowa, and Illinois on the Big Ten food chain, they will be doing fine.
And, because of the rivalry aspect of their game with UM, they could start winning about four out of ten aginast UM, but I still think RR will update UM enough that they can still take at least two out of every three against MSU.
You do realize after being burned by several decommits from recruits in southern states that Rich Rod and the coaching staff have refocused our recruiting efforts in the midwest, do you not? That's where many (if not the majority) of our recruits will be coming coming from in this current (2010) class.
There are 7 committed now from the Mid-West (didn't include PA of course) and we had 8 last year. We'll likely add a couple from the Mid-West to finish out the class, but will also have a couple more in the class total.
The upshot? No more Mid-West focus this year than last.
I lumped PA in with the midwest (probably shouldn't have done that). My overall point was to show that Rich Rod and his coaching staff have , in fact, put more emphasis on areas closer to the state of MI than they did last year.
Even with PA counted, it is a wash. This year (so far) we have two from MI, last year we had 4. This year we have two guys from Texas, two from Florida (with more to come), a guy from SC and a guy from Louisiana.
And the original premise of your point is flawed. There were decommits from all over last year, including one from Minnesota and one from MI (Big Will did re-commit), so why would we expect that recruiting the Midwest prevents "getting burned" by decommits. We had a couple decommits form Texas, but haven't stopped recruiting Texas.
RR is recruiting players he wants and they are (still) coming from all over.
If it's true that RR is recruiting more in the Midwest this year, I suspect it's because of the 3-9 record rather than any long-term plan.
Kids in the Midwest have been aware of Michigan as a huge football power their whole lives, and that perception doesn't completely change because of one bad year. Not that they've never heard of Michigan in Florida, but it's much less on the radar screen there. If you want to overcome the strong bias people have to go to a local school, you have to be able to show that your school is something special, which is hard for RR to do at the moment.
I admit I have no evidence to back this up -- it just seems like common sense to me.
Dantonio needs to win a Big 10 championship before he can be crowned with any acclaim. He is a good coach but he needs to accomplish a lot more before they can even be descibed as a very good program. They will miss Ringer this year.
I know MSU fans bragging to me about FUTURE MSU football Rose Bowls under Dantonio. I think I want to barf. Dantonio really dictates the media topics and press.
He starts off his career at MSU insulting UofM, and then gets the good press about not needing to insult UofM, but then continues to take the cheap shots.
He goes 7-6 his first year and the media goes bananas over it.
He gets an average at best recruiting class his first year and the media talks about how it is the building blocks of a championship team.
He gets beat by UofM in both of his recruiting classes, but the media focuses on how people should cheer for MSU since they have more in-state players.
It really is absurd.
It's hard to tell who's beaten who in the "recruiting wars" when many of these players have yet to see the field for either school.
No, you are conflating recruiting and player development. It isn't hard to see who is winning recruiting wars. You simply look at players both schools wanted and see who gets them. By that metric, Michigan consistently wins the "recruiting wars" against State. State gets occasional guys (Gohlson) that Michigan wants, but more often takes guys Michigan didn't offer (Hill). Michigan frequently gets players offered by both.
I love it. Dantonio's pulling all the strings in the media and bashing poor UofM.
It's a conspiracy. Somebody call the waaahmbulance.
Says someone from the fan base who whines about the "blue wall" or whatever you call it, even though the Detroit press and sports radio has spent the last two years doing nothing but ripping Rodriguez. And aren't most of them from MSU? I mean, you guys do like to mention that Michigan doesn't have a journalism program, so shouldn't you guys be dominating in-state reporting?
Maybe someday but not yet.
how come whenever MSU talks about their future Rose Bowl appearances people thing it's looking, but when we talk about what we think will be our excellent future, it's not looking up?
You make no sense.
I hear State fans talk constantly about how Dantonio is going to take them to the Rose Bowl. People everywhere agree that he's doing great things. How come when Michigan fans say Rich Rod is going to lead us to a MNC, people are always like "Nah, Rich Rod sux! 3-9 LULZ"
Maybe I'm just trying to make sense of my drunken rambling from last night. The Tigers game had my moodiness up and down all night.
I think part of the reason is that Dantonio has done better than his predecessors (though an untrained orangutan could out-coach John L.) and Rodriguez has done worse (albeit in a sample size of one season, and that with no returning talent on offense whatsoever). People are extrapolating from one or two data points and thinking that those make a trend.
I do think good things are ahead for Dantonio (consistent Rose Bowls might be a stretch, but I don't think it's unrealistic to think he's got a good chance to get MSU to one sooner or later), but I don't understand the assumption that Rodriguez is going to be a disaster. *Anyone* would have been a disaster with last year's so-called offense; having to work in his new system on top of that just made things worse. I don't think we'll really have a good idea what to expect from the Rodriguez era for another year or two.
The jury really is still out for both coaches at their respective universities.
And I hope, for both programs, and the state of Michigan, that they both see success.
If D'Antonio sticks at MSU, then a conference title should be in his future. Of course I would've said the same thing about Saban and he never took the Spartans that final step. That 1999 team was probably the best Spartan team in the past 25 years including their 1987 Big 10 Title team, and that team still could only manage 2nd place and settle for a Citrus Bowl berth.