Part I | Part II

Coaches love to talk about “program wins”: games that count as more than just a notch in the win column because they help elevate the team to a new stature.

The inspiration for this trek through old box scores is one of those wins: Michigan State’s comeback victory over Wisconsin on November 1. MSU, coming off of its first win over Michigan since 2001, was poised to lose a classic let-down game, the kind of loss the Spartans have perfected. Brian Hoyer was missing receivers, B.J. Cunningham had a scandalous drop in the end zone, Javon Ringer couldn’t get much going on the ground, and the Badgers had two different hundred-yard rushers, both of whom averaged well over five yards a carry. State was down 24-13 in the fourth quarter.

But MSU came back and won the game. It wasn’t just a big win, it was a win of Wow-they-never-win-that-game, Seriously-how-long-since-they-did-something-like-that proportions.

Not because of the opponent. Wisconsin came in unranked at 4-4, so they weren’t that scary in their own right. And not because of the comeback: two years before, State staged the biggest comeback in college football history against Northwestern.

The significance was that Michigan State won a classic let-down game, and specifically one in which they were, in many ways, outplayed. When they fell behind it felt disgustingly familiar. When they came back and won, it was time to reach for the history books.

Thus my little project.

A little background: In each of John L. Smith’s four seasons as coach, and even last year in Mark Dantonio’s first season, the Spartans were upset in at least one let-down game. But when MSU beat Purdue this season following the Wisconsin game, the Spartans finally clinched an upset-free season. (Penn State is a heavy favorite this weekend, and I’m considering any bowl matchup a toss-up.)

So here’s the question that prompted this foray into the box scores: Why has Michigan State traditionally been so vulnerable to upsets? And is the team really improving in those departments under Mark Dantonio?

First I looked to see if State was particularly vulnerable to giving away games, either by losing despite outgaining its opponents (Part I) or by shooting itself in the foot with turnovers and penalties (Part II). The answer is yes, they have been susceptible on the first two counts, and also yes, Mark Dantonio’s teams show significant improvement.

Now, for the final installment, let’s look specifically at the let-down games: games following a big game or string of big games. (I identified a big game as one against a ranked opponent or any game against Michigan or Notre Dame.)

As people have talked about Michigan State’s propensity for late-season fall-offs in recent years, I’ve heard a counter-argument that the Spartans’ losses pile up just because they face stiffer competition late in the season. That theory doesn’t hold up: for all the heat John L. Smith took for not being able to beat Michigan, his teams acquitted themselves well against top competition. He went a respectable 6-11 in big games and beat ranked teams five times. (Dantonio, in contrast, is 2-5 in big games and hasn’t beaten a consensus ranked team — Northwestern this season and Penn State last season were ranked in some polls but not the AP Poll.)

But John L.’s teams were suckers for let-down games, going 5-10 the week after a big game. After a string of tough games, you could practically count on his teams to lose against a mediocre team. And that didn’t change right away in 2007, when Dantonio’s Spartans lost their first three game-after-big-game chances before winning at Purdue. But that game against the Boilers was a tide-turning win, because State has now won four of those let-down games in a row.

The reason for the change might have something to do with preparation and Dantonio’s even-keel attitude. He’s consistent and that seems to be rubbing off on the players. While Dantonio acknowledged that “It’s a happy time around here” in his press conference to promote tomorrow’s Penn State game, he said it without smiling and followed it with an unbroken string of stay-focused cliches: “The job is not done. The key to evaluating a football team is at the end, not the beginning or the middle. September is for pretenders, November is for contenders.” A reporter then asked him what he thought about overshadowing the Michigan-Ohio State game for the first time in memory, and his answer was that he paid it no attention, instead focusing on the process, the season-long journey.

So to honor that approach, let’s take a quick journey ourselves, charting MSU’s growth and marveling sadly at its prior ineptitude with a quick year-by-year recap through the John L. Smith and Mark Dantonio eras.

John L. Smith: 2003-06. In 2003, John L. Smith’s first season, MSU was 6-1 with a signature win over #12 Iowa heading into a three-game gauntlet against ranked teams Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio State. They beat the Gophers, then lost close games to the Wolverines and Buckeyes. The let-down game was in Madison, Wisconsin, against a 6-4 Badgers team. Instead of bouncing back, State got bounced: Wisconsin gave MSU its worst beating of the last six seasons: 56-21, with the Badgers rolling up 320 more yards than State.

The next season, 2004, MSU got its revenge by pounding #4 Wisconsin to finish 2-2 in a four-game test against #20 Minnesota, #11 Michigan, 5-3 Ohio State and then the Badgers. The losses against Michigan and Ohio State were close. The following game, though, at 3-7 Penn State, was a 37-13 blowout loss in which MSU turned the ball over five times. After a loss to Hawaii in the season finale, a 7-5 season and solid bowl bid turned into 5-7.

2005’s mean streak lasted two games: a heartbreaking 34-31 loss to Michigan and a 35-23 loss at #15 Ohio State. But coming out of that stretch, MSU was 4-2 with a friendly remaining schedule. First up was a home game against 4-2 Northwestern—but it was a debacle, a 49-14 blowout loss. State lost four of its last five and again finished under .500 and out of bowl contention.

The most famous loss for John L. Smith’s last team in 2006 was at home against #12 Notre Dame—the Spartans lost a 37-21 fourth quarter lead and fell 40-37. But the next week they lost another, far more embarrassing close game, giving 1-3 Illinois its first conference win in three seasons.

Then they broke with tradition in two bizarre ways, starting with blowout losses to #6 Michigan and #1 Ohio State. What’s crazy is that those were the first two blowout big-game losses of John L. Smith’s tenure in East Lansing. All other losses to ranked teams were by two touchdowns or less. (At that point, he’d been blown out by unranked teams five times.)

Ironically, the next week MSU won, beating Northwestern on the road. It’s ironic partly because that’s the first time JLS ever won after facing ranked opponents the previous two weeks. And also because he got fired a week later, after his sixth blowout loss to an unranked team, this time a 46-21 beating from Indiana. Smith stayed on until the end of the season but never won again, and the Spartans finished 4-8.

Mark Dantonio: 2007-08. I mentioned that Mark Dantonio lost his first three let-down games. But one of those games was against a ranked team, when State lost to #9 Wisconsin in 2007 a week after beating Notre Dame. Dantonio has been very Vegas-friendly, beating the teams he’s supposed to beat. Maybe it’s his steady approach, maybe it’s cutting down on the mistakes explored in Part II of this series, and maybe it’s a combination. Whatever it is, it’s working.

There have only been three MSU losses to unranked teams on Dantonio’s watch, at Iowa and at home against Northwestern in 2007, as well as the Cal game to start this season. And those losses are all respectable, as all three of those teams—the 2007 Hawkeyes and Wildcats, and the 2008 Golden Bears—had winning seasons.

Two Dantonio wins stand out:

• Last year’s victory at Purdue ended a three-game losing streak and came week after a close loss to Michigan. The Boilers were 7-3 going into the game and out-gained State by 101 yards, but the Spartans won found a way to win. Coupled with victory over Penn State the following week, it was the first time in five years MSU had managed to stop the bleeding.
• The Wisconsin game this season, in which the Spartans were out-gained by 128 yards and trailed until a last-second Brett Swenson field goal. Because it followed the first win over Michigan in many seasons, and because State came out flat, it felt like a trap. But State won.

Those wins are strong signs of a new era of winning football in East Lansing. Something is different at Michigan State, where Mark Dantonio’s teams are capitalizing on their advantages, limiting their mistakes, and maintaining their focus from week to week in a way that the Spartans did not under John L. Smith.

On the other hand, Dantonio is still looking for his first win over a ranked team—something Smith did five times.

That’s something he can change Saturday in Happy Valley . . .

Part I | Part II