EAST LANSING, Mich. – Mark Dantonio bundled up in his winter coat, green headband and thermal gloves.
A face-freezing wind whipped through Spartan Stadium and knocked the temperature down to 21 with the wind chill. Michigan State's spring game felt more like a November homecoming outside, but Dantonio made sure to keep the competition as heated as possible inside those lines. On a third down in the second quarter, Dantonio tweaked a red-zone situation in a one-score game to give the offense an advantage, and he urged fans who validated their fan cards for the 2018 season through this spring rite of passage to get involved.
"Get louder!" Dantonio boomed through a mic.
The White beat the Green 32-30 in an offense vs. defense scrimmage that didn't reveal much with 13 starters out. We know what to expect from the Spartans by now. It's another chip-on-the-shoulder-model. It's the one Dantonio has perfected through compiling a 100-45 record entering his 12th season with Michigan State.
Dantonio came to the podium afterward and confirmed, that yes, "It was cold," before he thawed out and took questions. Given the developments around this program in the last 12 months, however, a routine spring game was a welcome change. It moved the program in the right direction with two spring practices remaining.
"We won 10 football games but the chemistry is right," Dantonio said. "We're doing things right in the classroom and off the field. I think that's an on-going process all the time."
Dantonio then raised his right arm above his head to make the next point.
"You can be up here then drop very quickly," he said while dropping the same arm. "You just have to push forward and make sure we are doing things right to the best of our abilities. But I like our football team. I like our young people."
The 2017 spring game was clouded with a sexual assault investigation, a chapter that closed when former Michigan State players Josh King, Donnie Corley and Demetric Vance agreed to a plea deal on seduction charges and King to a felony charge of surveilling an unclothed person on Wednesday. This offseason, the emotionally-charged days during the Larry Nassar trial preceded the resignation of president Lou Anna Simon, the retirement of athletic director Mark Hollis on Feb. 1 and the unveiling of an ESPN Outside the Lines investigation that questioned the men's basketball and football programs handling of sexual assault complaints. Dantonio responded to those allegations as "completely false," and there are no more developments on that front.
Michigan State appears to be moving forward, out of the spotlight but poised to be in contention on the field. In that regard, Dantonio hasn't lost his touch.
"There's a very good carry-over from last season and there's a lot of confidence," Dantonio said. "We play in a very tough league, the Big Ten Conference in the East Division. There are no gimmies out there."
The Spartans are coming off a 10-3 season and remain the terminal under-stated headliner in the Big Ten. Ohio State and Penn State won the last two conference championships and reeled in top-five recruiting classes. Michigan is coming off a five-loss season, which has turned up the volume on the Jim Harbaugh headlines. Wisconsin is looking for another Big Ten West crown, and Nebraska welcomes Scott Frost.
Michigan State almost always gets lost in that headline stack, then ends up challenging those teams for the Big Ten championship. That seems like another safe bet in 2018. The Spartans have 18 returning starters, the most in the FBS. Quarterback Brian Lewerke totaled 2,793 passing yards with 20 TDs and seven interceptions and rushed for 559 yards in 2017. The pieces are there for another run that it's easy to see coming considering Michigan (Oct. 20) and Ohio State (Nov. 10) both come to East Lansing.
"We had the bowl win and to have a good feeling at the end of your season is big," Lewerke said. "We definitely rolled with that through winter conditioning and on to now. With the amount of guys we have coming back and our team being young, I think it bodes well for us."
The competition is there at all levels. With 1:37 remaining, backup running Connor Heyward threw a half-back pass to backup quarterback Rocky Lombardi on a trick play – another signature of the Dantonio era – for a two-point conversion 25-24 lead with 1:37 left. Dantonio then promptly took the liberty of giving the defense three points to create one more in-game situation. Lombardi then hit Darrell Stewart Jr. on an 18-yard pass over the middle for a game-winning TD with 11 seconds remaining.
"I'm always going to make that game tight to try to put pressure on people to make a play at the end of a football game," Dantonio said.
That's how Michigan State's spring game ended, and Dantonio expects to see a team show up for fall camp ready to compete for another Big Ten run.
"The first thing we have to do is compete in East side and win that.," Dantonio said. "We've been able to do that – Legends (Division) or East, however you shake it out – three times in the last six, seven years or something like that. That's the bar."
Dantonio then motioned his right arm up again, to show where the Spartans expect to be on – and off – the field.
"That's where the bar is set around here," Dantonio said while keeping his arm up this time. "This is what you have to do. That's where our focus is at all times."
If we've learned anything, then the Spartans will have a lot more to say about that when the regular season rolls around.
