Michigan State and Iowa will face off at 7:17 p.m. Dec. 5 to decide the Big Ten Championship.
By Ryan Rodriguez
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INDIANAPOLIS — No. 5 Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio met with members of the media Dec. 4 to discuss his team’s upcoming showdown with the fourth-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes in the Big Ten title game.
Dantonio’s Spartans are appearing in their third Big Ten Championship game in five years, while Ferentz and the Hawks are making their first-ever appearance in a conference championship contest.
Similarities in programs go back years
When Dantonio was hired as head coach of the Spartans in 2007, he took stock of the program and made a decision about what kind of program he wanted to model the Spartans on, both in terms of style of play and in mentality.
Coincidentally, Iowa was the first place that came to mind.
“When I became a head football coach, I looked around at different programs, I said this throughout the week, I looked around at different programs and said who do we want to pattern our program after,” Dantonio said. “Iowa was probably the dominant one. Had a staff that had great continuity, that would stay in place, excellent coaches, a program built on toughness, not a system.”
Michigan State’s dynamic backfield runs deep
Much like Iowa, Michigan State prides itself on a very aggressive and very formidable backfield, preferring to run and slam the ball before opening things up to the pass.
Sparty has long been a running-back factory, but even with some elite company, the Spartans’ current crop of backs is as hard-working as any he’s seen.
“Last year, after Jeremy Langford left, we had no identity coming back at running back. Very few carries,” Dantonio said. “Delton Williams is back. But we had to establish that. Now I think we have four running backs who can play very effectively at this level and be successful.”
Iowa and Michigan State rank third and eighth, respectively, in the Big Ten in rushing.
On recruiting
For all the talk of similar mentalities and approaches to college football, the gap in terms of recruitment between Iowa and Michigan State is massive.
With just a handful of four-star and not a single five-star player in Iowa’s program, the the Spartans hold a massive advantage in terms of pure recruiting talent.
But Dantonio knows there’s so much more that goes into than simply finding the best high-school football players.
“Really it’s the work that you do once you get here that really elevates you,” Dantonio said. “I think between the ages of 18, and 17, there’s such a change in transformation in terms of physically, emotionally, and mentally in terms of preparing for football, that it’s really hard to gauge how a person is going to predict at the end of it all.”