Written by Bill Bender at SportsNews.com
The coach won a national championship as a defensive coordinator before inheriting a downtrodden program. He built a contender with old-school football values. Now, this program is still good enough to challenge the two flagship programs in the conference every year.
Which coach are we talking about? Is it Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio or former Wisconsin coach and current athletic director Barry Alvarez?
Both coaches are the right answer. That’s the long-term arc for how we got to Saturday’s Big Ten matchup between No. 8 Michigan State (2-0) and No. 11 Wisconsin (3-0) at Spartan Stadium.
Alvarez — who won a national title as a defensive coordinator with Notre Dame in 1988 — transformed a program that bottomed out in the 1980s into a regular Big Ten contender. The Badgers won three Big Ten championships and three Rose Bowls under Alvarez with a simple and efficient smash-mouth methodology — think 1999 Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne — that continues under second-year coach Paul Chryst.
“Well I’ve always felt that football was physical,” Alvarez told Sporting News. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be played. This formula has proven to be successful.”
Dantonio spent time cracking at Alvarez’s offense while serving as an assistant coach at Michigan State from 1995-2000 and as Ohio State’s defensive coordinator from 2001-03. He remembers preparing for Dayne in 1999 and the tough loss in Madison in 2003. He remembers big wins, too. It felt good to beat a tough and physical team.
“We also looked at Wisconsin in terms of playing good defense, being able to run the ball, not turning it over, solid special teams,” Dantonio said on the Big Ten teleconference Tuesday. “They’ve been extremely successful under Coach Alvarez.”
So Dantonio incorporated pieces of that into his model when he took over at Michigan State in 2007. He started with Kirk Ferentz’s model at Iowa but also wanted to emulate what Alvarez built at Wisconsin.
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