Michigan State’s dreadful season may be summed up by a quote Mark Dantonio gave after the game.
For most of the past decade, head coach Mark Dantonio and Michigan State dominated their rivalry with Michigan. Big Blue had fallen off with multiple coaching changes and an inability to put together contending teams in the Big Ten. However, the tides have turned with Jim Harbaugh as the head man (and highest paid coach in college football) in Ann Arbor, as he has returned the school to its national powerhouse roots and seem to be in line for a College Football Playoff spot.
On Saturday, Harbaugh would continue to take over the state of Michigan with a 32-23 win over the Spartans. This had been a two-score game at one point, but saw Michigan State score late to narrow the losing margin.
Most of this game saw MSU get dominated and even be down by 20 points at one point. However, according to Lansing State Journal’s Graham Couch, Dantonio thought he had to kick a field goal here to make it a two-score game, which would be incorrect.
Unless we’re all off on our math here, Dantonio and his staff missed the mark by a mile here, even if they were off by one point. To make it a two-score game, Michigan State would have had to close the gap to anywhere between 9-16 points. 17 requires three scores, which the staff apparently forgot about. It’s a silly blunder that could have changed how Michigan State went about their playcalling later in the game, despite the somewhat lopsided score in the fourth quarter.
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Next time, Mark Dantonio and his staff will need to think twice when doing elementary school math.