Tag: Michigan State Spartans football

Wisconsin, Big Ten brace for news on Michigan State coaching search

More on the Michigan State coaching search

When a high-profile and accomplished coach leaves his program (regardless of the cause), every other team in that program’s conference hopes that the successor at that program will not be a rock-star coach. Every other team worries that a program will find the perfect fit. This is the reality for every non-Ohio State football program in the Big Ten as of Wednesday afternoon. The Michigan State Spartans have a coaching vacancy. Mark Dantonio has retired after 13 seasons on the job in East Lansing.

Dantonio had the magic touch from 2010 through 2015, winning 65 games in those six seasons, an average of roughly 11 wins per year… and that was with a seven-win season included in the mix. Dantonio won 11 or more games in five seasons during that six-year period, winning 13 in the 2013 season and 12 in 2015. He made the College Football Playoff. He won a Rose Bowl. He won three Big Ten division titles. He won two outright Big Ten championships plus a split championship in the 2010 season.

It is true that Dantonio lost his fastball the past four years; Michigan State won more than seven games only once in that period of time, and people near the program felt Dantonio’s career had run its course. Nevertheless, Dantonio did show Michigan State — and the rest of the Big Ten — that the Spartans could be great, not merely good, at football.

Wisconsin and the rest of the non-Ohio State teams in the league will intently follow how the Spartans replace Dantonio.

The best man for the job is a matter of opinion, but for me, it has to be Luke Fickell of Cincinnati. Remember that Dantonio came to Michigan State from Cincinnati after the 2006 season. Dantonio was replaced at Cincinnati by Brian Kelly. Dantonio paid his dues and learned how to become a coach, moving up the ladder and knowing exactly what to do when handed a Big Ten job. Fickell has certainly spent enough time at Cincinnati and his previous stops as an assistant coach (Ohio State) to know exactly how to handle the MSU job, should he take it.

Fickell has the added benefit — from a Michigan State perspective — of being very familiar with the recruiting landscape in talent-rich Ohio. Michigan State needs to be competitive in the state of Ohio, getting the players Ohio State doesn’t take plus an occasional player who might think about going to the Buckeyes.

If you wanted to tell me that former Dantonio lieutenant and defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi — currently the head coach at Pittsburgh — is a better choice, you would have a reasonable point. However, Narduzzi’s division championship season at Pitt in 2018 was nevertheless a season which ended with a 7-7 record. Fickell has done more at Cincinnati, and ought to be viewed as the superior choice for MSU.

Wisconsin fans should therefore be happy if Narduzzi takes the job. (I might live to regret that comment, but life is too short to withhold firmly-held opinions in most cases.)

There are rumors that former NFL head coach Pat Shurmur and San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh are interested in the Michigan State job. Those rumors might not reflect reality, but if we are to take them seriously, Saleh comes across as the much more competent candidate for the job.

We could go on and on and toss around several more names, but the first domino is Luke Fickell. If he wants this job, it will probably be his. If he turns down Michigan State, this search could get very complicated. Wisconsin will be keeping tabs, along with the rest of the non-Ohio State Big Ten.

WATCH: Mark Dantonio gives farewell address at MSU/Penn State Basketball game

Mark Dantonio, former Michigan State Football head coach, addressed the MSU Basketball crowd during halftime. Watch this clip here.

Today, Mark Dantonio shocked the world with his resignation. He also addressed the home crowd during Michigan State Basketball’s game against Penn State. As always, Dantonio was straight to the point with his farewell address

Watch Dantonio speak to the crowd below:

Fans and former players reacted all over social media to Dantonio’s resignation. He retires as the most winningest coach in Michigan State Football history and also a Rose Bowl champion. I’m glad Dantonio said goodbye to the fans at this game. Plus, watching Dantonio and Izzo chop it up on the sidelines is always such a treat.

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Wisconsin decade in review: Badgers vs Michigan State

Wisconsin vs Michigan State

As the 2019 season brings to a close another decade of college football, Badgers Wire has been engaged in a series of reflective pieces. “Record Review” is another series examining how the Badgers have fared against the rest of the Big Ten. Next up is an examination of the Badgers’ record against a program that found a winner in Mark Dantonio. Michigan State has been a mixed bag for the Badgers. Let’s look at what Badgers Wire means by that. 

Using Stassen, Badgers Wire pulled up every result against Michigan State since the start of this decade. The Badgers gained a 4-3 advantage in wins with this year’s victory, but the Spartans prevented UW from getting on a roll in this series over the past decade. Only this year did Wisconsin win two games in a row in the series during the 2010s. The Badgers had a 2-1 advantage at Camp Randall, a 1-2 disadvantage in East Lansing, and had the only victory at a neutral site, which happened to be the 2011 Big Ten Championship Game. The two teams seem to trade losses and wins, and that was true within the 2011 season itself. Wisconsin and MSU split the 2011 meetings between them. 

Let’s talk about the biggest game played between these teams in the past decade, Wisconsin’s gritty win in the 2011 Big Ten Championship Game. The Badgers trailed 29-21 at one point and allowed Michigan State to take a late 39-34 lead, but Montee Ball capped an eight-play, 64-yard scoring drive on a score with 3:45 left and then closed the game out with more disciplined responses in key situations. When the chips were down, the Badgers found a way to win. This is what they haven’t done as often against Ohio State and Penn State. 

If the Badgers could somehow take the success they have against Michigan State and Michigan, and apply that to Penn State and Ohio State, they would be cooking with gas. It’s hard to tell where they would be in the overall conference title picture if they’d won a few of these close games against the tougher teams and found a touch more consistency against Michigan State. Fortunately for the Badgers, the biggest game they played against the Spartans this past decade resulted in a Wisconsin victory. More of that in 2020, and the grill will be cooking all season long… and well into the decade to come.

Big Ten, big ’20s: Michigan State football

Michigan State football in the 2020s

For the Michigan State entry in our “Big Ten, big ’20s” series on college football in the next decade of Big Ten competition, I asked a friend on #CollegeFootballTwitter, Matthew Herek, for some perspective. Matt follows the Spartans avidly and has the gift of being a fan who will tell it straight on the Spartans. He will say things are bad if they are bad. He will say things are good if they are good. He is a reliable observer when I need the real story on Michigan State sports.

Here is what Matthew Herek said about the big question facing MSU football in the 2020s:

“The easy answer is who will be the next coach..one way or the other that’s happening in the next decade. And yet I think the bigger question is where is that coach going to recruit? Michigan’s population is shrinking, leaving fewer players to split with U of M. The best and second-best players in Ohio are staying put. The next decade will see MSU need to find a durable recruiting pipeline outside of their comfort zone.”

It does indeed seem that Mark Dantonio is not going to coach through the entirety of the 2020s. That is a relatively easy call to make, even if you think Michigan State is going to bounce back in the next few seasons. Dantonio had health problems this past decade. It will take hard work to improve MSU to Michigan’s level, let alone Penn State’s or Ohio State’s level. Even if Dantonio shows more staying power than a lot of people expect, he will probably be out of coaching by 2024 or 2025. The strain of the job will take its toll even if Michigan State has one more revival under Dantonio.

Let’s say, though, that Dantonio does NOT revive MSU in the 2020 season. He could very well step down a year from now. If that happens — and given the lack of movement on the coaching staff at Cincinnati — a lot of people in the college football industry think that Luke Fickell might have his eye on the Michigan State job. If you are unsure why Fickell would choose Michigan State, let’s remind you that Dantonio himself came from Cincinnati to coach the Spartans after the 2006 season.

If Michigan State wants to recruit Ohio well in the 2020s, Fickell would rate as an obvious choice, if Luke wants to make the trip to East Lansing. We shall see.

Russell Wilson beat Kirk Cousins Monday – and in the 1st B1G title game

Recalling Russell Wilson versus Kirk Cousins in the 1st Big Ten Championship Game between the Wisconsin Badgers and Michigan State Spartans

Monday night — December 2, 2019 — Russell Wilson’s team defeated Kirk Cousins’ team, 37-30, in a big December game which would help determine where the respective teams would play in January.

Saturday night — December 3, 2011 — Russell Wilson’s team defeated Kirk Cousins’ team, 42-39, in a big December game which would help determine where the respective teams would play in January.

Deja vu, baby. Russell Wilson doesn’t have a perfect record against Kirk Cousins — the Seattle Seahawks lost to the Washington Redskins at home in the 2017 NFL season (but only because Seahawk kicker Blair Walsh missed three field goals in a game the Redskins won, 17-14) — but Wilson does keep winning the biggest meetings between the two quarterbacks. The Seahawks and the Minnesota Vikings are both playing for division titles and home games in the NFL Playoffs (with the possibility of a first-round bye included). Monday night’s game in Seattle was high-stakes poker.

Eight years earlier, Wilson and Cousins met in a supremely important game, the first Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis. Wisconsin’s first trip to Indy started something special. The Badgers are returning to the Hoosier State for their sixth Big Ten title game appearance. Michigan State has made three such trips, but the Spartans haven’t been back to Lucas Oil Stadium since 2015.

That Big Ten title game — played in a dome instead of freezing outdoor weather — invited conditions suitable for a track meet. That’s exactly what the game became. Moreover, it began a full decade in which Big Ten title games have usually been high-scoring rather than grind-it-out slugfests. This is proof of the evolution of college football. It is also proof that the old Big Ten of Woody and Bo no longer lives among us.

Get this: Of the eight Big Ten Championship Games which have been played, only two have involved fewer than 58 total points, only one with fewer than 48 (Michigan State 16, Iowa 13, in 2015). If you told a 1985 Big Ten fan that the most important Big Ten game of the season in the decade of the 2010s would average 64.25 points scored per game, s/he would have laughed at you. Yet, that’s the reality we have.

Russell Wilson and Kirk Cousins got the party started in 2011.

Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

Both men threw for three touchdowns that night, in a seesaw game which was pure popcorn. Wisconsin took a 21-7 lead in the first quarter. Michigan State stormed back with 22 points (yes, a 2-point conversion on a fake extra point) in the second quarter. The teams went to the fourth quarter with Michigan State maintaining an eight-point lead at 36-28, but guess what happened? Russell Wilson took over in the fourth quarter, leading two touchdown drives for a come-from-behind 42-39 victory. It’s what he did then. It is what he is still doing now with the Seahawks. Some things never change, right?

Wisconsin won the Big Ten in 2010, the last year without divisional play. That was due to a tiebreaker involving Michigan State. In 2011, the Badgers and Michigan State settled it on the field, and in the end, Russ won, Kirk Cousins lost. Cousins was not at fault for Michigan State’s loss that night, but as Green Bay Packer fans could tell you, Cousins has not owned the fourth quarter in the NFL the way Wilson has, or the way Aaron Rodgers so often has. He tried his best Monday night, but Wilson had the final say.

Russell Wilson usually gets the last word… and such was the case in the first Big Ten Championship Game, part of a streak of three straight Big Ten titles the Badgers won from 2010 through 2012. It is delicious for Wisconsin-based football fans to see a Badger hurting the Vikings and helping the Packers these many years later. The fun began on one night in Indianapolis, eight years ago.

Big Ten Championship Game: Wisconsin is part of a B1G trinity

Reflections on the Wisconsin Badgers’ sixth appearance in the Big Ten Championship Game.

Minnesota is in the rearview mirror. Let’s now move to the Big Ten Championship Game this upcoming Saturday against Ohio State. We have plenty of time to unpack numerous angles related to this contest. Let’s start with some aspects of Big Ten Championship Game history at the end of the first decade for this standalone event, which began in 2011.

It is fitting that Wisconsin and Michigan State played in the first Big Ten Championship Game, with Ohio State stuck for one season between the end of the Jim Tressel era and the beginning of the Urban Meyer era. Ohio State’s 2011 mess and its 2012 lack of eligibility for postseason play are why the Badgers have the most Big Ten Championship Game appearances at the end of the decade, with six. A 6 of 9 “shooting line” is 67 percent from the field, so to speak. That will do. It speaks to Wisconsin’s consistency and dependability as a program.

The surprise is not that Wisconsin has been consistent. It was consistent in the late 1990s. It was consistent in the several seasons immediately preceding the 2011 campaign, the first year with a Big Ten Championship Game. Wisconsin has generally been a 10-win program over the past two decades, with a brief period of drift in the early 2000s and an occasional ho-hum season (such as 2018 for Paul Chryst) in which a lot of things went wrong.

No, the surprise is not that Wisconsin has been consistent, or that Michigan State and Ohio State have also made multiple return trips to the Big Ten Championship Game in this decade, which is about to end. The surprise is that no one else in this conference has been particularly consistent at the higher end of performance.

Yes, Penn State has become fairly strong in recent seasons, and the Nittany Lions could become the team which makes an upward move among the Big Ten’s best teams in the 2020s. Yes, Michigan has not been terrible; its biggest sin under Jim Harbaugh is that it can’t match the juggernaut Urban assembled, and Ryan Day sustained this year, at Ohio State. Nevertheless, Michigan has not been relentlessly consistent in the way it used to be under Lloyd Carr. Yes, Minnesota could become the fresh new face in the top tier of the Big Ten in the coming decade.

Yet, all of them haven’t truly maintained a regular annual home in the top tier of the Big Ten. The first nine seasons of divisional play and a Big Ten Championship Game reveal that Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Ohio State are the ONLY three programs to make the Big Ten title game more than once.

Does that surprise you? Maybe the current pecking order in the Big Ten — with a second Wisconsin-Ohio State B1G championship showdown in three seasons — casts that statement in a different light. Maybe it is so expected that Ohio State and Wisconsin will win their respective divisions that the above fact doesn’t resonate very strongly. Fair enough.

Yet, I ask you to pause for a moment. Just absorb this question and what it means: In 2011, when the first Big Ten Championship Game was played, were you prepared to think that Michigan would not play in ANY of the first nine B1G title games?

Were you prepared to think that Nebraska would play in only one, and go seven years (and counting) without so much as a division title? Were you prepared to think after 2015 that Iowa would not get back to this game in the remainder of the decade?

The fact that we have had nine Big Ten title games (including this upcoming 2019 edition) means that 18 berths in the Big Ten Championship Game have been allotted in the past nine seasons. The leaderboard looks like this:

  • Wisconsin, 6 berths
  • Ohio State, 5
  • Michigan State, 3
  • Nebraska, Iowa, Penn State, and Northwestern, all with 1 apiece

The top two aren’t surprising at all, and in 2012, Ohio State would have qualified had it been eligible. The surprise is how few Big Ten programs have returned to Indy… and Michigan State, after so many strong seasons, is a program in decline, with Mark Dantonio’s career seemingly out of gas.

Wisconsin and Ohio State, it can reasonably be argued, are not only the two most reliable programs in the Big Ten; they might be the ONLY reliable programs in this conference.

Analyzing the Point Spread: Michigan State -20.5 vs. Rutgers

Do the numbers think MSU can cover a big spread against Rutgers?

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Piscataway, NJ where college football teams go to rescue their seasons.

Michigan State, currently mired in a five-game losing streak, travels out to the east coast to take on Rutgers in a game the Spartans must have to retain their shot at making a bowl game.

Oddsmakers feel that a matchup against the Scarlet Knights is exactly what MSU needs to get back on track as the Spartans are a big 20.5 point favorite against lowly Rutgers.

Odds via BetMGM. Access USA TODAY Sports’ betting odds for a full list. Lines last updated November 7 at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Let’s take a look at how the line is being bet and what that might tell us about this matchup.

First, the opening. This line opened at MSU -23 at Circa Sports book. (Reminder, Circa Sportsbook has been consistently the first book to post lines, followed by offshore books, followed by bigger onshore books.)

By time the big books (William Hill, Westgate, Caesers, etc.) opened their lines, MSU had dropped to -20. Clearly there was some money come in on Rutgers early and that makes sense. Michigan State is totally reeling. Rutgers *might* feel like they finally have a chance to win a conference game. Michigan State under Dantonio almost never covers when they’re three touchdown favorites and MSU is a meager 2-8 against the number this season. There’s not a lot of reason to be confident in betting on the Spartans right now.

Next we look at the current line and how the public is betting it. The number sits at 20.5 as of publishing with 75% of public bets on Michigan State.

I just said there’s not a lot of reason to be confident in betting on the Spartans right now, so why is the public betting on the Spartans? Well, the public is generally bad at betting! They don’t build skyscrapers in the desert for nothing. Really though, there are a couple of concrete factors here. By dropping from 23 to 20 the line went through the three touchdown margin. It’s only a few points, but in betting those points really matter. Michigan State is a much more appealing bet at -20 than at -23 because three touchdowns is -21. Makes sense, right? Also, that +23 number was probably gobbled up by sharp money.

Let’s look. little deeper into the line movement.

The red line represents the spread. The blue line represents the split in bet percentage. See how on the far right of the graph it sits right at 25%? That’s because Rutgers is getting 25% of the bets. I want to focus on that spot where the red line juts down to -21 then right back up to -20.5. At the point the line moved to -21 Rutgers was getting about 10% of the bets. Then immediately after the line moved to 21 Rutgers shot up to about 30% of bets and the line jumped back to 20.5. Oddsmakers tested the waters of MSU -21 and it was absolutely gobbled up. That indicates sharp money. I highly doubt the line moves back to 21 again because of how aggressively it was bet last time.

Stitching all of this information together we have a line that was seemingly hit by big money early in favor of Rutgers. As it settled in the public started backing Michigan State, but not enough to move the line much. That indicates more big money bets are on Rutgers. Then the line moves to 21 for a moment before it is immediately bet back to 20.5 where it has sat by consensus since then.

I think books are comfortable with that line. I think they’re comfortable with how the money is dispersed in this game. I think the books and sharps are both siding with Rutgers on this one.

Then we factor in where Michigan State is at in terms of on-field product, how these two have matched up in the past and Danotnio team’s having an inability to cover big numbers and it feels like we can feel good about knowing which side is the right side.

The Pick: Rutgers +20.5

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