VIDEO: Michigan State football continues to embrace national championship aspirations
Spartan fans are witnessing something that has never been seen before — Michigan State is openly and brazenly embracing aspirations of playing for an winning a national championship in football.
In the hype video above, released by Michigan State football's official Twitter handle, there is audio of 247Sports' Josh Pate declaring his belief that the Spartans can win a national championship under Mel Tucker. There is other audio about "competing for championships" as well.
This is new behavior for Michigan State football. Yes, the program has always wanted to play for championships, particularly Big Ten titles, but rarely have they been this open and willing to publicly demonstrate their ambition to win a national championship.
To put this all in perspective, before Mark Dantonio broke through in 2010, Michigan State hadn't even won a conference championship in 20 years, much less a national championship. You have to go all the way back to Duffy Daugherty in 1965 and 1966 for the last time the Spartans claimed a national championship.
In 2013, the Spartans won their first outright Big Ten championship and went to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1987. Dantonio would add one more conference championship to his total in 2015, taking Michigan State to the College Football Playoff where the Spartans ran into the sport's greatest powerhouse in the Alabama Crimson Tide, falling by a score of 38-0.
Dantonio, the school's all-time leader in wins and the only Michigan State coach to win three Big Ten titles, is widely considered the greatest coach in Spartan history.
Even at the height of Dantonio's regime, when Michigan State went toe-to-toe with the likes of Ohio State and Wisconsin for conference crowns, a national championship seemed out of reach. Only one Big Ten school, Ohio State in 2002 and 2014, has won a national championship since college football shifted to the Bowl Championship Series in 1998.
Yet, under Mel Tucker, here is Michigan State, openly and brazenly broadcasting their intentions to compete with the sport's greatest powers for college football's top prize.
You can't help but admire the confidence, but speaking about it and going out and doing it are two different things.
As the hype video above concludes with, Tucker is recruiting at a level never before seen at Michigan State. In order for the Spartans to compete with the best in the sport, that's where it begins. Michigan State needs more top-level talent, as was discovered by Dantonio and the Spartans in 2015.
If there's a guy who can bring a national championship to East Lansing, it's Mel Tucker. The head coach would have had plenty of suitors from the likes of LSU, USC and Oklahoma this past offseason, but Tucker shut that down when he signed a 10-year, $95 million extension with Michigan State.
With that contract, the university supplied an unprecedented investment in Tucker, and the head coach is responding with an unprecedented ambition to turn Michigan State from a Big Ten power into a national power in college football.
