As Spring Practice Sets To Open Within a Week, Mark Dantonio Gives An Inside Look at the State of Michigan State Football
St Louis, MO
MSU head coach Mark Dantonio is entering his 10th season at the helm of Spartan football as spring practice sits on the precipice of a crucial time. With big losses both in talent and leadership, this is poised to be a big spring in East Lansing.
Everyone is already aware that Mark Dantonio inked his best recruiting class yet, but missed was the preferred walk on. Michigan State under Dantonio’s leadership is known for walk-ons who parlay success into a scholarship and a chance to play professionally.
There has been a lot of reporting that was not accurate about the amount of walk-ons Michigan State would take with this class. I asked Dantonio for the amount and he said, “Right now we’re taking seven with this class, yes, preferred, and one is a gray shirt.” The gray shirt player is Bradley Robinson the long snapper. A gray shirt means he enrolled in January of this year, but won’t be on full scholarship until next January.
So is Dantonio willing to admit that this is his best recruiting class? Not so fast. “Can’t ever diss my other guys, the bottom line is how do they end up. We can talk all that all we want, but in the end, its how you finish, and really how many players are you putting in the league." He continued saying, “That says something about your program has well, also what’s your record, what’s your accumulative record at the end of everything, how many championships have they won. If you look at this senior class that we just had, they won 2 big ten championships flat out, and in the middle of it all they went to a Cotton Bowl and ended up NO. 5 in the nation.” So where does that leave the state of MSU football now? “I think we’re on solid ground, there’s a foundation built, and that’s got to hold true. but we have to keep going above and beyond where we’ve been, that’s that nature of who we are, I think I’ve said that before, When you get up there at those heights, it’ becomes difficult.”
So as the Spartans get set to enter spring has there been some guys stand out in winter workouts? “I would say that we’ve got a lot of players that look like they can play football, that they’re athletic and they can run, we’ve got some guys coming off of injuries that need to rehab — that’s the nature of football these days that this time of year, a lot of times spent rehabbing or you have corrective surgery that has to take place so certain guys might be out for spring practice or whatever. But our football program I think is healthy, we should have good players and we should be able to surround them with good players coming in.”
The Spartans will kick off spring football with their spring football media day on Monday. Of course Spartan Nation will be there with full coverage!
