Coach D will be disappointed if MSU isn’t bowling
Mark Dantonio has bold expectations for his Michigan State football team this season. With preseason magazines predicting the Spartans to finish anywhere between 8th place to 11th place in the Big Ten, making a bowl game might seem like a minor miracle. The Spartans will reportedly have the Big Ten’s toughest schedule with Illinois and Minnesota dropping off the schedule and being replaced by Iowa and Wisconsin. Regardless, Dantonio thinks his team is capable of making it to a bowl game. Joe Rexrode of the Lansing State Journal writes that Dantonio doesn’t put much stock into media expectations and instead focuses on what he sees from his players in workouts.
Preseason magazines are picking the Spartans anywhere from eighth to 11th in the league - no big surprise considering the depth of quality teams in the Big Ten, and the fact that MSU went 1-7 in it last season.
“Our players read the newspaper,” Dantonio said when asked if his team is aware of the consensus on its chances. “The newspaper people don’t play. … They don’t have a sense, really, of what the reality is.”
The reality, he said, is that his team adopted an appropriate mind-set in spring ball and summer workouts.
“I’d say it’s resolve,” he said of that mind-set. “Nobody likes to lose and given the opportunity to right things, you take it upon yourself I think. … Resolve, optimism, but as I said before, the reality is what happens (in Spartan Stadium). We need to be able to handle adversity. We need to work on that every day.”