Miami State Spartans -- Personal Foul U, 2.0

Submitted by Nonnair on

Mark Dantonio has now coached in five Michigan-Michigan State games. If you're wondering whether UM's players have justification to start feeling a bit like a roughed-up MSU dorm-hall coed and her friends, you're right.

Inglorious stats from the past five Michigan-Michigan State games, if I gleaned the play-by-play logs accurately:

YEAR MSU PFs MSU RPs MSU UCs MSU all 3 combined UM all 3 combined
2007 3 0 0  3 2
2008 0 0 0 0 1
2009 4 1 0 5 0
2010 1 0 1 2 1
2011 4 2 0 6 1
TOTALS 12 3 1 16 5

PF = personal foul          RP = roughing the passer       UC = unsportsmanlike conduct

 

Basically, Dantonio's Spartans are going to play like a bunch of hooligans when Michigan plays at Michigan State -- 11 personal fouls and 3 roughing-the-passer penalties in three games played at Spartan Stadium. And in the past three Michigan games alone, the Spartans have committed 9 personal fouls, 3 roughing-the-passer penalties and an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. (By comparison, Michigan has committed 2 such penalties in the past thee games, and 5 in the past 5 Michigan State games.)

All this excludes the chop-block penalty incurred late last year on Michigan State, which crushed Mike Martin's leg -- a vicous attempt to injure -- and excludes the likely suspension coming to Gholston on Monday.

Maybe we've all got it wrong, however.

Maybe Dantonio isn't modelling his football program after Jim Tressel's at Ohio State's; rather, maybe he's patterning it on Dennis Erickson's notorious Miami-Florida teams of the early 1990s. True, Saturday's total of four personal fouls and two roughing-the-passer penalties isn't nudging up next to Miami's bellwether game when it comes to notoriety -- the 1991 Cotton Bowl, when Erickson's Hurricanes were flagged 10 times either for personal fouls or unsportsmanlike conduct in a 16-penalty victory over Texas. But six ugly penalties is in the ballpark, let's not sell Gholston and co. short.

More encouragingly, Dantonio's players have only a short ways to go to match those Hurricanes' worst off-field crime incident. The Hurricanes weren't wearing ski masks or roughing up co-eds, but back in their bad-ass heyday some 40 Miami players were involved in an on-campus disturbance that could be put down only by 14 squad cars worth of cops and a police dog.

But here's where you can be proud, Sparty. When Sports Illustrated wrote an open letter to Miami's president in 1995 compelling him to shut down his renegade football program, the author cited a Miami Herald story in which it claimed -- in shocking italics! -- that "No fewer than one of every seven scholarship players on last season's team has been arrested while enrolled at your university." Hell, everyone knows the 2009 Sparties had that beat by a mile after ski-maskgate.

As for Miami's other records of notoriety, maybe next year, Hurricanes. Er, Sparties.

Comments

BigBlue02

October 18th, 2011 at 3:40 AM ^

I wonder what you and the Spartan faithful would say if Wisconsin went after Cousins with a late hit to the knee and he was out for the year. I bet it would be just fine because that is all part of the game, right? Those Wisky players would just be playing tougher, right?

Undefeated dre…

October 17th, 2011 at 5:02 PM ^

But can we please stop with the collective belly-aching? There are two options when you are bullied:

1) Tell someone in authority

2) Stand up to the bully

Because we haven't done option (2) in the past 4 years, it seems we're choosing option (1). I'd prefer we take our lumps and (hopefully in 2012) take it out on them on the scoreboard. Let everything else fall where it may. Should Gholston be suspended? Yes. But if he isn't, so what, move on. The world is unfair.

SHub'68

October 17th, 2011 at 10:22 PM ^

When it works, it continues.  Year after year, the Spartans come out in that game intending to kill whoever they come in contact with.  I've watched this for decades.  It is so ingrained in them that they have to beat Michigan that all sorts of stuff becomes okay.  Dantonio really does hate Michigan.  He may not actually be guiding them to play dirty, but his players will certainly sense his demeanor - and will hear responses to it being questioned like those of Narduzzi - and all things become licensed.

On another tack, it's also been a problem for their coaches to get them to play the rest of the season.  This is something Dantonio has had to address (and Saban before him).  It's always fascinated me that some truly shitty State teams could come out and play almost equal to some damned fine UM squads; if they could be so good on one day, why so bad on all the others?

BigBlue62

October 18th, 2011 at 9:32 AM ^

Because U of M is their superbowl, their bowl game, their end all be all.  They've lost to Michigan so many times in the past that a win of us makes their season.  Dantonio hates Michigan - but with his history @ OSU and MSU, I'd say he comes by it naturally.  60 min of unnessary roughness, just glad we didn't get called for it on every play. Really Narduzzi? What a moron.  Just hope this is bulletin board stuff for our guys for the next 362 days... I've said it before and I'll say it again - cannot wait to get the 2012 o-line class in here. If we end up with Banner, I think it'll be one of the best all time O-line classes.