CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Mark Dantonio needs only three wins to break Duffy Daugherty’s Michigan State career record win total, but it’s safe to say, judging by Pat Narduzzi’s initial reaction, the Spartans’ coach doesn’t bring up the subject with friends and colleagues.
Narduzzi, Dantonio’s defensive coordinator for 11 seasons at Cincinnati and Michigan State before he landed the head coach job at Pitt in 2015, was at the Westin Hotel on Thursday for the ACC Kickoff media days. As he walked through the lobby on the way to fulfill his many interview sessions, he was stopped and asked about his old boss closing in on Daugherty, the College Football Hall of Fame coach.
“Three wins?” said Narduzzi, apparently unaware. “I’m going to have to call him when I get out of here.”
Dantonio’s Michigan State record is 107-51 in 13 seasons, a .677 winning percentage. Daugherty retired following the 1972 season with a 109-69-5 mark ( .609) in 19 seasons with national championships in 1965 (UPI) and 1966 (National Football Foundation co-champions with Notre Dame).
There have been eight coaching changes since Daugherty retired, but none of his successors were a blip near the century-mark radar until Dantonio’s blinking dots appeared during last year’s 7-6 record. No other coach has lifted the Spartans to loftier heights — not even George Perles’ career with a 1987 Rose Bowl title. His final record was 68-67-4 (73-62-4 before five forfeits for an academic scandal that changed 5-6 in 1994, his final season, to 0-11).
Dantonio’s Spartans won Big Ten titles in 2010, 2011 and 2013, the 2014 New Year’s Day Rose Bowl and earned a semifinal berth in the 2015 College Football Playoff. The Spartans were ranked in the Top 10 three straight seasons: No. 3 in 2013, No. 5 in 2014 and No. 6 in 2015.
“Mark isn’t one of those guys that is about records,” Narduzzi said. “He doesn’t really care. I’m sure some day in the future he’ll be sitting on a beach in Mexico or Naples or Lake Michigan watching his grandchildren running around. Maybe then he’ll look back and say, ‘Hey, I can’t believe I broke that record.’ ”
When Dantonio arrived from Cincinnati in 2007 as the top choice of a committee that included basketball coach/football fan Tom Izzo, Narduzzi said the goal was simply to win games.
“It’s not like he got there and said I’m here to break his record,” Narduzzi said. “We had to win a game.”
The Spartans had missed bowl games three straight seasons, capped by dispiriting 4-8 record in 2006 despite a 3-0 start.
In that season’s fourth game, a second-half collapse dampened more than the cloud burst that rained on the second half of the night’s 40th anniversary of Michigan State and Notre Dame meeting at Spartan Stadium in their 1966 Game of the Century. Same with retiring the No. 95 jersey of College Football Hall-of-Famer Bubba Smith, a two-time All-American defensive end in 1965 and 19666.
The Spartans blew a 17-point halftime lead. Notre Dame scored 26 second-half points to win 40-37. The season continued to unravel and John L. Smith was fired with a 22-26 record in four seasons.
The culture needed to be changed, and Narduzzi had a front-row seat for “how to” as he came to work with Dantonio and the staff every day at the Duffy Daugherty Building.
The experience has served Narduzzi well as Pitt’s head coach.
Prior to his arrival, losses in bowl games meant Pitt had finished with a winning record in only one of the four previous seasons under two coaches. Narduzzi’s fifth-year at Pitt adds stability to a job that was a steppingstone for Paul Chryst back to Wisconsin and Todd Graham perceiving a better opportunity at Arizona State, where he was later fired
“You learn things that you want to do, you learn things you don’t want to do,” Narduzzi said. “You learn I’m going to do things exactly like he’s doing it, or I may tweak this here or there.”
After back-to-back 8-5 records Narduzzi’s first two years, the Panthers slipped to 5-7 in 2017. But they bounced back to win the ACC Coastal in 2018.
win the ACC Coastal in 2018. Pitt started slowly at 2-3 before winning five of six to claim the title, although three straight losses to finish the season to Miami, Clemson and Stanford led to a 7-7 record.
“I told the players the best thing is we got here and we’ll be back,” he said of the ACC title game loss to eventual national champion Clemson (15-0). “There is something to being there. Clemson has been there before. At Michigan State, we beat (Wisconsin quarterback) Russell Wilson (in the regular season), but we lost to them in the Big Ten title game. We came back two years later and beat Ohio State, knocking them out of the playoffs. There is something to having been there.”
Narduzzi’s record as Michigan State’s defensive coordinator caught the attention of the Panthers he inherited.
“We had a lot of confidence in him for the success he had as a coach,” said Dane Jackson, an honorable mention All-ACC defensive back returning as a redshirt senior. “As a defensive coach, he especially gave the defensive players confidence.”
But Narduzzi also wanted to establish a Pitt identity.
“He’s his own guy,” Jackson said. “We’re playing a lot of the same schemes, but he’s not always telling us this is the way we did it at Michigan State.”
If Michigan State starts out 2-0 with wins over Tulsa and Western Michigan, the Spartans can deliver Dantonio the record in the third game when Arizona State and head coach Herm Edwards visit Spartan Stadium.
Arizona State visits Spartan Stadium. Narduzzi won’t be there — his Panthers have their hands full that day at Penn State — but he’s been there before alongside Dantonio.
“He’s an incredible person,” he said. “He’s a great coach. I wish him luck in the 2019 season. He’s three wins shy of Duffy Daugherty, who is a Michigan State legend. He’ll get it done after the third game of the season. That’s what they do up there.”
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Tom Shanahan, Author: Raye of Light http://tinyurl.com/knsqtqu
— Book on Michigan State’s leading role in the integration of college football. It explains Duffy Daugherty’s untold pioneering role and debunks myths that steered recognition away from him to Bear Bryant.
http://shanahan.report/a/the-case-for-duffy-and-medal-of-freedom
http://www.shanahan.report/a/forty-four-underground-railroad-legacy-facts
David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and biographer; “History writes people out of the story. It’s our job to write them back in.”
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3 pings
Brendan Bettez says:
July 20, 2019 at 3:10 pm (UTC -5)
Awesome article, really enjoyed it, but there was one line that tripped me up. “Pitt had been to only one bowl game in the previous four seasons under two coaches.” I think you meant to say that Pitt had only won one bowl game because they went to bowls every year from 2008 to 2016.
Tom Shanahan says:
July 20, 2019 at 4:05 pm (UTC -5)
Thanks
Fixed — I meant to type winning season after the bowl.
Tom Shanahan says:
July 20, 2019 at 4:05 pm (UTC -5)
Thanks!
Fixed — I meant to type winning season after the bowl.