It was only two years ago that Michigan running back Mike Hart said Michigan State was the Wolverines’ “little brother,” igniting a firestorm of anger from the Spartan community and reiterating further the long-held feeling that the folks at U-M were indeed “arrogant asses,” at least when it came to MSU. The comment came after Hart and his pals helped Michigan to its sixth straight triumph over its in-state rival. This one was particularly distasteful for Sparty, since it was of the crushing, come-from-behind variety.

Afterward, a smiling (some said smirking) Hart delivered the final blow: “Sometimes you get your little brother excited when you’re playing basketball and stuff, let him get the lead, and then you just come back and take it back.”

They didn’t appreciate that in East Lansing. It’s bad enough that the Wolverines acted like they were the big brothers already. Hearing Hart say it only made things worse. But what could the Spartans do? Head coach Mark Dantonio issued a terse response the next week — “It’s not over. I’m going to be the coach here for a long time. It’s not over. It’s just starting.” — and made fun of Hart’s relatively diminutive (5'9") stature, but he didn’t have much ammunition at his disposal.

Until now. Now that Michigan is reeling after a putrid 3–9 campaign that established new lows for the proud program. Now that it appears as if the ascending Spartans are on the verge of passing the Wolverines in the Big Ten hierarchy, or at least pulling even over the long haul. Now that MSU has a chance to win its second straight over U-M for the first time since 1967. Now that there is a growing sentiment around the state that Sparty is on the rise, while its rival is searching for a way to gain some traction after the 2008 disaster — and looking elsewhere to do it.

Dantonio has too much class to crow about the Wolverines’ misfortune, although he did make a crack about how his team had no reason to hang its head after a late-season loss. “As I said before, embarrassing would have been 3–9 coming into this game,” he said. Dantonio ­doesn’t have to boast, because Michigan knows it must be pretty concerned about its “little brother.” Another season or two like 2008 (cue the hyperventilating), and the Wolverines could have Indiana hot on their heels. As the Wolverines search for answers, the landscape is changing below them.

Chris Norman is a linebacker from Detroit Renaissance High School and an incoming freshman at Michigan State. He chose the Spartans because their coaches seemed “down to earth” and Dantonio appealed to him as “a guy with morals and values.” The Bible on his desk clinched the deal. Norman didn’t get the same “feeling” from the Wolverines, who used to rope in just about all the top players from the state of Michigan. (Rivals.com rates Norman a four-star prospect.) And when it came to the subject of the rivalry between the two teams, Norman didn’t sound too interested. This wasn’t pro-Spartans bluster from a rookie trying to fire up the faithful and establish some credibility with his future teammates and their fans. Norman’s assessment was even, levelheaded and almost apologetic. But it provided an interesting take on the current status of the two programs, particularly in the eyes of the what-have-you-done-lately teenagers the schools are targeting.

“When Michigan State beat Michigan (last year), I don’t want to take anything away from Michigan State, but Michigan is going through a rebuilding process, with a new staff,” he says. “It’s not a ‘gimme’ game, but you can’t just beat up the fat, slow kid in gym class. When Michigan State beats Michigan when both programs are (on) the same (level), then you can say Michigan State did something.”

Slow, fat kid? Whoa, Chris. Why not just say the Wolverines have lost to Appalachian State and Toledo in the past two years? What’s that? Oh, never mind. It’s important to understand that Norman wasn’t spitting some nastiness when he made the comment. To him and some of his post-adolescent pals, Michigan’s quick fall is its defining quality right now. And to a group of people for whom the Biggie vs. Tupac feud passes for ancient history, one season makes a big difference. Beating the Wolverines one time doesn’t necessarily mean MSU has vaulted past Michigan in the national hierarchy. If that were the case, the Spartans’ 1978 win would have signaled a large sea change. (It didn’t.) Keep in mind that Michigan holds a 30–9 edge over Michigan State since 1970 and has won or shared 20 Big Ten titles during that period, to MSU’s three. You can’t have an upheaval in only 12 months.

What you can have, however, is the start. And judging by what happened last year, when the Spartans won nine games, played in a New Year’s Day bowl and had their best recruiting class in a while (No. 17, according to Rivals.com) — Dantonio calls it a “foundation class” — Michigan State is certainly on the rise. And, in terms of its death struggle for state superiority with Michigan, it couldn’t come at a better time.

“Of course it was a big deal to beat them last year,” says Joel Foreman, a sophomore guard at MSU. “It had been (six) years since we had beaten them and (18) since we beat them in the Big House. It’s a big deal, but we’re not focusing on the past. We want to make (beating Michigan) a tradition, but it has to be done over the course of years.”

Dantonio began that process when he arrived in 2006 and found a program that was not only losing too frequently but also making the kinds of on- and off-field mistakes that dashed any hopes of succeeding down the road. One of the things that you could count on about the Spartans was a near-pathological habit of torpedoing any chances of triumph. Key penalties, lapses in focus at a crucial times and just plain dumb mistakes were the MSU hallmarks. The program’s leadership was, of course, to blame. But so were the players brought to East Lansing. Other coaches used to pay attention to whether MSU was recruiting someone and then go the other way, since the culture of failure — yes, the Spartans did play in some bowl games over the past 10 years, but the Silicon Valley Football Classic doesn’t quite qualify as a “major” postseason invitation — was so pervasive and was thought to attract types who would perpetuate that ethos.

One of the first things Dantonio did was tighten up the discipline.

“So much is a confidence thing,” he says. “Things unravel sometimes, and if you don’t address that, it starts to repeat itself.” No longer could teams count on Michigan State to beat itself. The days of getting into a little trouble against MSU and sending out the S.O.S. (Same Old Sparty) were gone. Dantonio was clear to address that from the beginning, but that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t have to build on it.

Though the 2008 Spartans won nine games and earned an important comeback win over Wisconsin, they were still dusted by a combined 69 points vs. Ohio State and Penn State, the two best teams in the Big Ten last year. As much as MSU has improved and matured, it has yet to understand what it takes to compete on the biggest stage with a pair of bullies. The OSU loss was particularly galling, because it came in East Lansing at a time when the Spartans had won six in a row and were starting to get national attention. There were those who believed MSU had advanced to the stage where it could take the Buckeyes. Not so. Ohio State 45, Michigan State 7. And it wasn’t that close.

“I give credit to (Ohio State), because they came and showed up,” Foreman says. “We didn’t, and we have to work on that. In football, 60 minutes is not necessarily enough time for the best team to win. It’s more for the team that executes. Great teams execute. I didn’t feel like that was our football team.”

Dantonio takes Foreman’s assessment one step further. Yes, the Buckeyes executed. More important, they were tougher. “We were outplayed physically at the point of attack,” he says. So, while the Spartans try to cut down on mistakes, they also have to craft a personality that allows them to take a smack to the collective chops and respond with a shot even more powerful. That’s something to which Dantonio is completely committed, and watching the Spartans use Javon Ringer about 90 times per game last year shows the program’s devotion to a rugged personality.

Michigan, meanwhile, is going in a different direction. Rodriguez’s spread attack focuses more on finesse than power, and the Wolverines’ defense could suffer as a result, since practicing against teams that try to exploit matchups in the open field doesn’t allow a defense to prepare well for husky opponents that like to lay siege to enemies. You can argue that since even Ohio State and Penn State — two ground-game-and-defense practitioners since the days of Uncle Milty — are spreading things out, then why shouldn’t Michigan? The difference is that the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions remain committed to powerful defenses, while Rodriguez is clearly choosing speed over size, a philosophy that has served the SEC and Big 12 teams pretty well but hasn’t played well yet in the Big Ten. Yet. If Rodriguez packs both sides of the ball with the kinds of fast, nasty playmakers that can be found at Florida, LSU and Alabama, big things will follow in Ann Arbor.

Michigan fans fear that this drastic culture change, which has caused concern because of its departure from what the program has been about since Bo took over in ’68, will alienate the program from its roots and cede the state’s high school talent to MSU. Though Michigan is one of the few schools in the country that can recruit nationally, it’s tough to keep going onto other powerhouses’ turfs and taking their talent. If the Wolverines stray too enthusiastically from their base, they may encounter difficulties landing the best in-state prospects down the road.

There is already evidence that is beginning to happen. First off, the 2009 U-M recruiting class, rated in the top 10 by just about every analyst, included only four players from Michigan, while 12 of MSU’s 23 recruits were from the Great Lake State. The issue, according to Rodriguez, is finding the proper match. He wants to recruit Michiganders, but he knows it’s important to make sure they can play in his system.

“We have a commitment to recruit in-state,” he says. “You always start in-state first, then move beyond that. We can recruit nationally, but it’s important to get guys in-state. But we want there to be the right fit, position-wise. There are a lot of good guys in-state, but everything has to fit right.”

In other words, if the high school players in Michigan aren’t fast enough to be in the spread offense, the Wolverines don’t want them. Since Michigan’s four decades of power football have no doubt trickled down to the prep ranks, it’s going to take a while for the new style to find its way into the high schools. Rodriguez will try to propagate the faith, but he’ll be up against some formidable opposition, since the majority of coaches on the Spartan staff are from Michigan or neighboring Ohio and have developed good relationships with coaches in those key battleground states. Michigan’s staff, on the other hand, is peppered with southern coaches. The question becomes whether it’s more important to be close with the locals or able to go nationwide. Judging by the early returns on the Wolverines’ 2010 commitments, Rodriguez and his staff have continued to troll the whole country, particularly Florida, for talent, and have done it successfully. A couple more classes like 2009, and the Wolverines will look like a Southeastern Conference team. That won’t be so bad.

So, the question is, will Michigan State take advantage of Michigan’s step back in order to forge deeper relationships with the state’s high school coaches and talent to pull even with its rival or possibly pass it? Or is it just a matter of time until Rodriguez lifts Michigan to its previous heights or beyond by selling the school’s national reputation and his chic offensive philosophy to players throughout the U.S., beginning with Michigan?

“We’ve heard it from some of our opponents,” Rodriguez says about the criticisms that Michigan isn’t tending to the home crowd. “But people in the state and those who follow recruiting can see we are making the effort to find the best players, wherever they may be. We’re looking in-state first. But we don’t make recruiting decisions based on what other people say.”

There can be no doubting that casting a wider net can bring in bigger fish. The question is whether Michigan will eventually be a team consisting of players with no true allegiance to the school beyond the bond they develop once they step on campus. MSU’s Foreman speaks about his lifelong affection for the Spartans and how his first visit to the campus deepened that allegiance. “I leaned to the Green,” he says. Dantonio understands the value of a prospect’s extended ties to an institution and how it can help the program.

“When you have an emotional attachment, it helps you in the long term,” Dantonio says. “When you start with that, you tend to want to build something.”

Right now, Dantonio is assembling a winner in East Lansing. His three seasons on campus have proven that. Rodriguez is still in the early stages of his construction project, with a much different blueprint, and it’s too early to tell whether or not he’ll be successful. Two different approaches with two similar goals. In a few years, the schools could have comparable results.

And a whole new take on an old sibling rivalry.

This feature appears in the 2009 Athlon Sports Big Ten Magazine. Click here to purchase your copy.

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