Just when it looked like things were going to get interesting again between the long-storied rivalry of Michigan and Michigan State, after just two months on the job, newly-hired Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer is effectively tossing a wrench into MSU coach Mark Dantonio's plans.
After two highly-successful seasons that saw the Spartans nab their first bowl win in a decade and back-to-back records of 10 or more wins and a 2011-2012 top ten ranking, Dantonio appeared to finally be drawing some of the national spotlight upon East Lansing, Mich., an area that lay dormant in the world of college football during the dark times of previous head coach, John L. Smith. The Wolverines suffered through three years of lame-duck coach Rich Rodriquez's hammed-up spread offense recruiting that resulted in the state of Michigan, as well as Dantonio's home state of Ohio, becoming a treasure trove of homegrown talent for Michigan State.
Most importantly, with his team's new found respectability, Dantonio had been able to begin recruiting the players that he wanted to implement into his system to keep MSU as a top competitor in the Big Ten Conference.
Urban Meyer is beginning to change all of that...already.
It's thought of, or rather was thought of in days of ol', that once a player verbally committed to a school that he was "off-limits". This is no longer true. Meyer brought with him to Ohio State his aggressive SEC-like recruiting tactics and has already made many enemies and few friends.
As one of his first moves as head coach of the Buckeyes, Meyer snatched top-ranked, verbally-committed Michigan State recruit, Se'Von Pittman, right up from under Dantonio's nose. He followed that shortly after by securing offensive tackle Kyle Dodson, who had decommitted from Wisconsin and was rumored to be heading to East Lansing as well.
Mark Dantonio knows this isn't the old, glory days of the Big Ten. This is a new, sometimes depressing era in college football. With scandals popping up left and right and big name schools slowly but surely eliminating all competition for recruits and contracts, being a coach in the NCAA might feel more like being a buccaneer alongside the likes of Blackbeard or Captain Henry Morgan.
“It’s a new program, a new head coach and a new testing of the waters,” Dantonio said of Ohio State. “It’s a two-way street. It’s always a two-way street. There’s always got to be the other person listening as well.
“But I do think that when it becomes a matter of twisting somebody — when you’re a 50-year-old man or a 40-year-old man twisting a 17-year-old — that’s when it’s wrong. I’m not saying that’s happening in the Big Ten conference. But I see that happening around the country, when somebody decommits on the day of signing. That’s when you have to wonder about the tactics.”
MSU defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi, who passed on an opportunity for a head coaching position with Texas A & M to stick alongside Dantonio, told reporters that while he isn't naming any names (at least not to any reporters), he thinks that the "backroom deals" some coaches are exercising in the Big Ten are just simply wrong.
“I’m not accusing anyone specifically,” Narduzzi said on Wednesday. “All I’m saying was that there was time when there was an understanding between coaches that if two of you were going after somebody and they committed, you backed off.”
In the wake of the Sandusky sex scandal at Penn State, and the passing of their longtime head coach Joe Paterno, Urban Meyer pounced upon the program's top-ranked recruits and made them his own as if he were a hyena that had stumbled across a pack of dead, delicious elephants. Still, Dantonio was able to procure one highly-touted recruit in the wake of the scandal in four-star defensive back Demetrious Cox, whom Narduzzi feels is going to be an important piece for the Spartans' backfield.
“He’s going to be really good,” Narduzzi told the media of Cox. “He’s someone who can possibly make an immediate difference.”
Ohio State's program under Meyer is certainly back before it was expected; No doubt the school's main reason for hiring the cut-throat former-SEC guru. With new Wolverines head coach Brady Hoke looking to clean up the mess left by Rich Rod in Ann Arbor faster than anyone anticipated, and Wisconsin consistently becoming a more prevalent headache for the Spartans' each season, it looks like the mini-vacation enjoyed by Michigan State has been cut short for now.
You can follow MSU Examiner, Michael Ferro, at twitter.com/MichaelFerro.
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