Michigan Football: Is This the Year the Tide Turns Against MSU?

Recent history hasn’t been on the side of Michigan football when it comes to Michigan State. Is this the year the Wolverines turn it around?

Michigan football takes on the fourth best D1 football team in the mitten state in East Lansing on Saturday. The Wolverines are 23 point favorites and even that seems generous given the fact that Michigan State is 2-5 and has looked every bit the part of a non-bowl team.

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It’s not fun to be a State fan right now, but, in fairness, it has never really seemed fun to be a State fan.

This game wasn’t a guaranteed win even in the best of times because Sparty’s season usually revolves around beating U of M, but it wasn’t a cause for year long anxiety the way it is now.

The past eight years have warped the fabric of this in-state rivalry so thoroughly that for an entire group of Wolverine fans beating State is the more important than almost anything else the Michigan football team can do.

Are you sick of the flaming couch empire? Well, it seems like this year could usher in another era of Michigan dominance over Michigan State. First, though, how the hell did we get here?

Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke led Michigan down a dark path in general, but nowhere were their failings more glaring than against Michigan State.

Michigan seemed, at different points during their reigns, like a soft, unprepared, uninterested, frightened, or just plain overmatched team against MSU.

Here’s Michigan getting flayed in a game that would permanently shake Devin Gardner’s confidence.

Here’s Brady Hoke’s genius idea to plant a railroad spike in Spartan Field before the game, something for which he apologized for after getting dominated. Here’s one of many dirty hits on Denard Robinson. The list goes on.

Good rivalries are usually ones that include a little wink and a nod between opponents, indicating that the stakes aren’t life and death and you don’t actually wish one another harm beyond what happens on the field. In that sense, the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry is not a good rivalry. Raiders third string quarterback Connor Cook posted this little gem a few days ago:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMAo7qJjbyF/

Uh . . . sure? I mean, you would hope that a program that loves trolling and finding #disrespekt anywhere and everywhere would at least be a little better at it, or at least be a little more creative than a Breitbart comments section.

I’ve been in Michigan Stadium for my fair share of “Little Sister!” chants and I’ve seen plenty of “Ann Arbor is a Whore” t-shirts worn proudly on game day in East Lansing and Ann Arbor and more than anything it made me sad that people devote so much to being so impotently unfunny.

It’s not all that surprising, considering the fact that Michigan has dominated this rivalry on and off the field since its inception and only extremely dark days for U of M has ever made this a competitive affair.

Mark Dantoni crafted the MSU football program in his image: they have a manic fixation on even the slightest slight, a chip constantly resting firmly on their shoulder, resentment of programs that get more attention or are more successful, and, finally, they delight not in victory so much as in schadenfreude.

This is a program that took a 21 year old’s joking insult and turned it into a rallying cry perfect for an aggressively insecure fan base and program: Mike Hart called MSU little brother and everything went to hell. Dantoni–in a move that was only surprising at the time–responded with a few weird barbs directed at Hart (again, a college student) through gritted teeth and a scowl:

That is a man without a sense of humor, at the very least. I mean, he quoted Proverbs 16:18 later in this interview for God’s sake (“pride comes before the fall,” which is actually a shoddy paraphrase).

Part of me wants to say that this season is some sort of cosmic justice for the Spartans, affirmation of the fact that trying to build lasting success on a foundation of negativity is a fundamentally cynical and foolish endeavor. In reality, Dantonio is a good coach that has been saddled with a resurgent in-state rival, a ton of new starters, and attrition within the coaching staff. They won’t be a sub .500 team for long, I fear.

That said, history says Saturday could be the beginning of the end of Michigan State’s run of success against Michigan. Jim Harbaugh is currently tied with Bo for the second best twenty game start in program history at 17-3 behind Fielding Yost.

Not so coincidentally, the last time Michigan State was as good as they’ve been under Dantonio was in the mid 60’s under Duffy Daugherty, just before Bo took over in Ann Arbor.

Michigan had gone from having an historically great coach (Fritz Crisler) to a very good coach (Bennie Oosterbaan) to Bump Elliott. Elliott’s overall record as coach at Michigan was 51-42-2 and the program looked lost in the woods until he stepped aside for Bo.

As the Bo era wound to a close the program went through a similar cycle: historically great coach (Bo) to good/very good coaches (Gary Moeller and then Lloyd Carr) to a series of awful coaches (Rodriguez and Hoke). By the time Michigan was able to hire Harbaugh, the program was probably even further out to sea than it was when it hired Bo.

The connections between Harbaugh and Bo–personally and professionally–are undeniable. Repeated with borderline annoying frequency, sure, but undeniable nonetheless. Before Bo, MSU owned the state of Michigan: Elliott went 2-7-1 against Sparty. Daugherty led MSU to unprecedented national success for most of the 60’s and won a national title in 1965. Michigan hobbled along, trying to get to five or six wins most years until 1969.

Michigan lost the ’69 game and then went 17-4 against State until Schembechler retired as coach in 1989. Daugherty faded away and State went back to playing second fiddle. Harbaugh lost his first MSU game as well, but, if everything goes as expected, he won’t lose his second.

There are a lot of talented high school players in Big Ten East country, but seemingly not enough for Ohio State, Michigan State, and Michigan to all be top tier programs for any extended period of time. Harbaugh and company have spent the past two years reclaiming control over in-state recruits and the overall narrative surrounding these two programs.

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Michigan’s seven year spiral created a power vacuum in the state that Dantonio and Sparty took advantage of, just as the Spartans of the 60’s did. Michigan then went out and hired a ruthless, excellent coach in both instances. Bo swatted MSU away, and it’s time for Harbaugh to do the same.