U of Cinn. coach Mark Dantonio has been hired by Mich. St. according to the local press. CMU's Bryan Kelly has been signed by Iowa St. I would have thought that Kelly would have been the better choice for the Spartans since he has been recruiting in the state the past couple of years but maybe he wasn't interested in the Spartan job.
Dantonio is a good hire. Let's see if he can last 4 years before they get tired of him. You can expect the D to improve by leaps and bounds, but I'm not sure about the O. Smith for all his shortcomings was a decent offensive coach.
I think Kelly wanted the MSU job since the opportunity for success is better there than at Iowa State which has been a bottom feeder in the B8/B12. Since the Holy Grail for Spartan fans is beating Michigan, I suspect Dantonio ties with Tressel were too attractive to pass up. What do the Buckeye SBoxers think about this hire?
I agree....D'Antonio is a good hire. He was one of Tressel's most trusted advisors and put together some great, great defenses. I hope he gets an opportunity to get something done there....short of beating his old boss!
No doubt MSU is a much better job than the Iowa State job. I can't imagine that Brian Kelly would rather coach at ISU. I have no doubt that Dantoinio was chose because of his ties to big time success at OSU and to a good job done at Cincy. I don't know anything about Brian Kelly, maybe he's the next Jim Tressel, if so he needs to have some good teams quickly at ISU then move up the first chance he gets, because you just can't sustain it at ISU.
MSU has had a long history for shooting itself in the foot re it choices for head coaches. Back in the early 70s, Switzer was passed over for Denny Stoltz and the end result was Michigan replacing MSU as the preeminent team in the State. Can you imagine what the B10 would have been like with Woody, Barry, and Bo? They had a great coach in Saban but animosity between the president and him resulted in Saban leaving to LSU although Saban probably was destined to jump to the pros. After Saban left, they could have hired Urban Meyer but ended up with Bobby Williams and Jon L.
I think Dantonio is the better hire than Kelly. He has ties to Ohio high school programs and they need to pull from more than one state rather than focus on playing 2nd fiddle in Michigan. I'm curious what his salary is. He was the lowest paid Big East coach @ 500K per year. I have to think he's in the 1.5 mill range @ MSU.
I agree this is a good hire for MSU. Hopefully he will not pull too many Blue Chippers from Ohio. Don