As coaches move between jobs frequently, it is hard to have enough of a sample size to make any sort of judgment about how one guy does against another team. One of only 10 Power 5 coaches who’ve been at the same place for a decade-plus is Mark Dantonio, in his 12th season in East Lansing.
Mark Dantonio’s ownership of Michigan, charted
His Spartans beat expectations against Michigan almost every year.
Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports
Based on his first 11 years, we can make a few definitive statements. His defenses will generally be very good, especially against the run. His staffs are generally not elite at recruiting, but they find players to fill roles and are good at development.
And his teams always play well against Michigan.
Success against Michigan State’s archrival is a sine qua non for a Michigan State coach. Aside from being critical with respect to winning the division and therefore the conference, it’s the regular season game about which Spartan fans care the most.
As one might expect for a coach who made his bones as an assistant at Michigan State and Ohio State, Dantonio puts a lot of importance on the Michigan game. The results over 11 years bear this out.
Against Michigan, Michigan State beats Vegas’ expectations basically every year.
Thanks to the helpful Odds Shark database, you can enjoy this carnage:
Mark Dantonio vs. Michigan, against the spread
Year | Spread | Result | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Michigan -12.5 | MSU by 4 | MSU +16.5 |
| 2016 | Michigan -24.5 | Michigan by 9 | MSU +15.5 |
| 2015 | Michigan -7 | MSU by 4 | MSU +11 |
| 2014 | MSU -16.5 | MSU by 24 | MSU +7.5 |
| 2013 | MSU -4 | MSU by 23 | MSU +19 |
| 2012 | Michigan -8.5 | Michigan by 2 | MSU +6.5 |
| 2011 | MSU -3 | MSU by 14 | MSU +11 |
| 2010 | Michigan -4.5 | MSU by 17 | MSU +21.5 |
| 2009 | Michigan -4.5 | MSU by 6 | MSU +10.5 |
| 2008 | MSU -3 | MSU by 14 | MSU +11 |
| 2007 | Michigan -3.5 | Michigan by 4 | Michigan +0.5 |
In short, Michigan covered in its first game against Dantonio (and then only with two late touchdowns to reverse a 10-point deficit) and then Michigan State has covered the last 10. Michigan State has covered by double digits in eight of the 10 games. The average for Michigan State covering is 13 points.
Project that to 2018’s game, in which Michigan is a touchdown favorite, and you get a six-point Spartan victory.
By comparison, Dantonio is 5-4 against the spread against Ohio State, 5-3 against Wisconsin, and 6-3 against Penn State. He is generally good in big games, but on a whole other level against Michigan.
Michigan State outperforms season-ending S&P+ against Michigan as well.
S&P+ can compare teams on a week-to-week basis, which Bill Connelly uses to make picks against the spread each week.
But let’s try something different: let’s use team ratings from the end of each season to show the Spartans really do play better than their usual game when they go up against Michigan.
Mark Dantonio vs. Michigan, against season-ending S&P+
Year | Season-ending S&P+ difference | Game result | S&P+/game difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | MSU by 1.1 | MSU by 4 | MSU +5.9 |
| 2016 | UM by 23.4 | UM by 9 | MSU +11.4 |
| 2015 | UM by 5.2 | MSU by 4 | MSU +12.2 |
| 2014 | MSU by 11.8 | MSU by 24 | MSU +9.2 |
| 2013 | MSU by 5.3 | MSU by 23 | MSU +14.7 |
| 2012 | MSU by 2.5 | UM by 2 | UM by 1.5 |
| 2011 | UM by 6.2 | MSU by 14 | MSU +17.2 |
| 2010 | MSU by 4.2 | MSU by 17 | MSU +15.8 |
| 2009 | MSU by 8.1 | MSU by 6 | UM +5.1 |
| 2008 | MSU by 9.4 | MSU by 14 | MSU +7.6 |
| 2007 | UM by 3.7 | UM by 4 | UM +3.3 |
(Note: there is a three-point adjustment for home field in this table, as is traditional in point spreads. For instance, in 2017, Michigan State was 1.1 points better than Michigan by S&P+ at the end of the year. Since the game was played in Ann Arbor, that would’ve led to Michigan being a 1.9-point favorite, if they’d played the game at the end of the year. Since Michigan State won by four, the Spartans over-performed final S&P+ by 5.9 points.)
Again, the data point to Michigan State exceeding its normal level when the Spartans play the Wolverines.
Michigan State has over-performed what S&P+ would’ve predicted at the end of the year in eight of 11 games against Michigan under Dantonio, including five in a row. The average game has featured Michigan State outperforming the final-season S&P+ expectation by 7.6 points. The difference is not as great as the point spread disparity, but it is still significant.
Michigan would be a 12.1-point favorite on a neutral field in 2018 according to S&P+, which translates to S&P+ making Michigan a nine-point favorite in East Lansing. If the Spartans overperform the weekly ratings by the 7.6-point season-ending average, then Michigan will barely win.
It gets even starker for Michigan, because these year-end S&P+ numbers include the results of Michigan-Michigan State games. Remove those games, and we would expect Michigan’s S&P+ rating to go up while Michigan State’s goes down. Michigan State raises its game against Michigan to an even larger degree than the full numbers express.
So what does this all mean?
- We can expect Michigan State to play its best game. The battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy ranks relatively high in the list of most unpredictable rivalries, but that unpredictability all goes in one direction. It’s reasonable to expect Michigan to get the Spartan team that won in Happy Valley moreso than the one that lost by 10 at home against Northwestern the week before.
- Michigan fans cannot dismiss Dantonio’s success against the Wolverines based on seven games against Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke. A common refrain by Wolverine supporters is that Dantonio feasted on two bad coaches. He is 2-2 against Harbaugh and Lloyd Carr as compared to 6-1 against Rodriguez and Hoke. However, Dantonio’s teams have over-performed against Harbaugh even more than they did against his less successful predecessors. Michigan State has over-performed the year-end S&P+ numbers by almost 10 points per game in three games against Harbaugh and over two touchdowns per game against the spread. Harbaugh should know that his team has to raise its level from how it has generally played in rivalry games to date.
- This phenomenon is more about Michigan State over-performing than Michigan under-performing. We would not expect three different Michigan coaches to all underperform in the same way against the same team. Dantonio is the constant here, so we can assume that what we are seeing is more about his sideline than the other.
- Dantonio can put an emphasis on the Michigan game without disadvantaging his team in the rest of the schedule. One might think Michigan State saves all of its wrinkles for Michigan and thus that the Spartans would struggle before and after the Michigan game. MSU’s win in Happy Valley the week prior to 2018’s game is a piece of evidence against that theory. More generally, the Spartans are 7-5 the week before the Michigan game, but that includes losses in Dantonio’s first three seasons. MSU has won seven of its last nine games both before and after playing Michigan. They are 9-2 the week after Michigan overall, with one loss to the eventual national champions in 2014 and a second in 2016, when the Spartans were losing to everyone. We would not expect the Spartans to have three divisional titles and three conference titles under Dantonio if they put everything into the Michigan game.
- Michigan fans cannot dismiss Dantonio’s success against the Wolverines based on luck factors. There is no doubt that Dantonio has benefited from some unusual occurrences. The 2011 game was played in a windstorm. The 2017 game featured a monsoon after the Spartans took an 11-point lead. The 2015 game had a ... rather unusual ending. It’s possible to cite these factors when we are talking about a small number of games, but with the Spartans having over-performed against Michigan for a decade, there should be no conclusion other than the fact that Dantonio knows how to deliver peak performance against his arch nemesis.
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