Couch: 4 reasons Spartan fans have to be thankful this Thanksgiving
On this Thanksgiving, amid some trying times at Michigan State — for MSU football specifically — there are things that MSU fans can and should be thankful for. Here are four of them:
1. You hit the lottery in hoops
What Michigan State basketball has become and has been for the last quarter-century is the dream of every middling college athletics program in the country — to become a power and sustain it over time, for the coach who builds it to stay and to become the face of your university community.
There are blue bloods in college basketball and football, schools where the history and resources and coaching hires have sustained winning for generations. And then there is everyone else. Almost no one gets to take the leap from one to the other.
Clemson and Oregon football. Gonzaga basketball. MSU basketball. In the two largest sports in college athletics, that’s about it.
Every coach who is hired at high-major basketball program is held to the standard of Tom Izzo, even if sometimes subconsciously. It’s the same way Mark Few, in building Gonzaga basketball from a mid-major into a high-major power, inadvertently has gotten hundreds of mid-major basketball coaches fired by overly ambitious athletic directors who want their program to be the next Gonzaga.
Every major college basketball and football program that isn’t among the elites is hoping their next coaching hire can do for them what Izzo did for the Spartans. That goes for the hopes of MSU football fans, too.
Because MSU hit the lottery in hoops. Izzo took over in 1995, rolled up his sleeves and, he’ll tell you, built the program by out-working people. A little luck came into play, too. He landed elite players out of Flint in Antonio Smith, Mateen Cleaves and Charlie Bell. But they were also available. You won’t find that sort of talent coming out of one city in Michigan anymore. You'll rarely find that sort of in-state talent in Michigan at all. Back then, Michigan high school basketball was producing multiple future NBA pros in most classes. And, as Izzo built MSU's program and built a fence around the state in recruiting, the University of Michigan's program found itself on probation and scuffling.
Still, Izzo found the right point guard, the right kids, won a national title and then — with an offer to leave for the NBA — stayed. And stayed again. And, at 68 years old and in his 29th season, just brought in one of his best three or four recruiting classes ever.
No matter how you’re feeling after any single basketball game this season or anything happening with MSU football, you’ve got a basketball program that is the envy of most of college athletics.
2. MSU fans get twice the joy (and sometimes pain) as most fan bases
Very few college fan bases care so equally about the two major sports as MSU fans do. And even fewer have enjoyed the success in both of those sports than Spartan fans have, even if it's been a minute since football has been fun.
Consider what you’re experiencing in football right now — a coach fired, a team losing, a rival winning big. Not fun. Imagine if, instead of being an MSU fan, you were a Florida or Mississippi or Penn State fan, and this was happening there. Your misery would be endless or at least completely tied to football — hoping for a good hire, that your rival stumbles, that the pain stops. You’d have zero distraction.
Instead, at MSU, while you want all of those things, you have the distraction. You have more than the distraction. You have another sport you care about equally. You get to turn the page in November to a basketball program with championship aspirations, rather than aching year-around about football. You get a chance to beat your rival in something else that matters to you.
Find me another school with this level of success in both basketball and football over the last decade that’s love for each is so balanced. It doesn’t exist. Treasure it.
3. There’s a lot of energy with other sports at MSU
I can’t remember a time when there’s been this much hope and new energy all at once around so many sports at Michigan State — hockey, volleyball, women’s basketball and women’s soccer.
MSU’s hockey program is finally going places after a depressing decade. Second-year coach Adam Nightingale appears to have been a home-run hire. MSU’s volleyball team, in Year 2 under Leah Johnson, has created a buzz that had been missing for several years and her program looks like it’s on its way to becoming a factor in the Big Ten again. The hiring of Nightingale and Johnson are two reasons to trust athletic director Alan Haller as he makes MSU's football coaching hire. MSU's women’s soccer program, under third-year coach Jeff Hosler, has rapidly gone from an afterthought to a Big Ten power. MSU’s women’s basketball program, after a lot of good years under Suzy Merchant, has turned the keys over to a promising young coach in Robyn Fralick, with promising early returns.
If it weren’t for football, this would be a golden age of optimism and fresh energy for MSU athletics. Lean into that.
4. It could be worse for MSU football
That might not sound like an inspiring Thanksgiving prayer, but it’s true. Things could be worse for MSU's football program and for you, the fan — your program could be stuck in the middle.
MSU’s football program knows exactly where it stands — in the middle of a transition, with the need to redefine itself and get behind the promise of its next coach. It is better to be in this spot, with all the possibilities of what’s next, than to be a program that’s never going to achieve its dreams under its current coach and either doesn’t realize it yet or is winning just enough to keep the status quo. That program — see Maryland, for example — won’t even get to begin the rebuild until it comes to terms with its situation and decides not to accept it. That program is five years behind the Spartans.
MSU also isn’t at rock bottom and, if it can hang on to a number its top young players from its last two recruiting classes, doesn’t have to be awful early in the next coach’s tenure. Because Mel Tucker wasn’t fired for losing. There was some evidence of progress in recruiting in his last last couple recruiting classes. That progress could benefit the next coach, who might just be in place not long after your second helping.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU basketball, football: 4 reasons for Spartan fans to be thankful
