Monday - November 05, 2007

Pride

For many of us in Big 10 country, the word "sparty" has entered the college football lexicon in the last 10 years as a useful word to describe that unique phenomenon that seems to identify and capture the essence of the Michigan State football experience. It's a wonderfully versatile word that can be used as a noun, an adjective or a verb.

Noun: When someone goes out of their way to talk about the Michigan - Michigan State rivalry as a thing to be disrespected and Michigan as a program to be disrespected, but then turns around and complains that they deserve to be treated better by Michigan, that is just who Sparty is.

Adjective: When the Michigan State teams is unproven and unimpressive, when it's been years since they achieved anything of their own yet their fans find the time to taunt rivals in the wake of a rival's loss, that is very, very sparty.

Verb: When Michigan State plays the best football they are capable of and stakes out a 27-10 lead midway through the 4th quarter of the game, yet somehow manages to lose it, Sparty on!

And we've all come to expect it. "That's just Sparty being Sparty."

When Bobby Williams went out of his way to treat the rivalry with disdain, that was very sparty. And as much as I enjoyed John L. Smith's tenure and found him endlessly entertaining, some of his antics (like instructing his players on how to guard midfield in case of a loss) were very sparty. So when John L. Smith was let go and Mark Dantonio was brought in, the fervent hope in East Lansing must have been that this would be different. Dantonio was all business. Nothing sparty about him.

In the short time he's been at MSU, Mark Dantonio has covered himself in sparty. When he took a relatively harmless shot at Michigan after being informed that we had lost to Appalachian State, that was very, very sparty. And when he installed a countdown clock that marked the minutes and seconds until kickoff, that was very, very sparty, too, almost sending a message to the team that 7-5 with an upset victory over Michigan is their definition of success.

[BTW ... coach Dantonio: the only clock that matters is the one on the scoreboard. You don't celebrate the beginning of the game; you celebrate at the end. And by "at the end" I mean 0:00, not a 10 point lead with 8 minutes to go. You'd think players on a team which has Spartied on as much as Michigan State would know better than to congratulate each other on their impending victory, but apparently Dantonio spent so much time teaching them to get ready for the Michigan game that he forgot to teach them how to win the game.]

If that's all Dantonio did, it would be a matter for MSU fans, that they could shake their heads and say "Man, I really thought we had escaped all that" before hoping that they could rebound with a win over Purdue or PSU. But Dantonio instead chose to take it to another level, by (among other things) lecturing Michigan about sportsmanship and class and then mocking Mike Hart in his comments to the press today.

Really, coach Dantonio, mocking Mike Hart's stature? Mocking the physical stature of a back who has run for 650 yards against your team in 4 years? A man who ran for >100 yards on a bad ankle in one half of action? You're going to mock him? I don't know how big Mark Dantonio is or how tall he stands, but on the field and on the scoreboard, Mike Hart is a bigger man than Mark Dantonio has ever been.

And even that wasn't it. Reacting to Michigan's moment of silence after the game (a direct reaction to Dantonio's earlier remarks)  and to Mike Hart's comments about MSU being our little brother, Dantonio cautioned Michigan that "pride comes before the fall." Apparently Dantonio needs a dictionary. Taunting your opponent after a win is not prideful. It may be arrogant and it may be obnoxious, but it is not prideful. Likening your opponent to your kid brother may be condescending, but it's not prideful. 

You know what is prideful? A grown man, at a press conference 2 days later puffing himself up as the model of sportsmanship (this flag planting crew, headed by a coach who mocks opposing players is going to lecture people on class?), then taking out the damage to his ego on his opponents, warning them about the consequences they will surely pay down the road. That is prideful. Don't miss that for one second; Dantonio's pride was hurt by the loss and by the fact that his comments were mocked. His pride was hurt, and that's what prompted his remarks. "I’m going to be a coach here for a long time. It’s not over. It’s just starting. I’m very proud of our football team and I’m very proud of the way our football team handled themselves after the game as well.”

Pride comes before the fall? On Saturday night, 5 days after Dantonio's display of pride, hours after Michigan State has fallen to Purdue and fallen to 5-6, I hope Mark Dantonio revisits his advice to Michigan that pride comes before the fall.

(much of the referenced action documented here)