Mark Dantonio is staying humble during induction into MSU Ring of Fame

Mark Dantonio’s name is going up in the Spartan Stadium Ring of Fame during Saturday’s game. On Friday evening, there was an event packed full of former players and assistants — and anyone that could make it that had a hand in Michigan State’s success — during his tenure.

The three-time Big Ten champion coach was quick to give a ton of the credit for the fact that he’s being inducted during MSU’s game against Ohio State.

“I hope every one of these players that are here — and everybody that’s really worked with us closely — sees a little bit of their name up there on that award, because I think these are program awards,” Dantonio said Friday. “I think these are things that you don’t get without a lot of people, and everybody’s got to be pulling in the right direction and be doing their job and be excellent at their job. When we came here, we wanted to build a legacy, and I think that’s what we did as a program.”

He knows what it feels like to be the guest of a former boss’ ceremony. Dantonio has worked for several legendary head coaches as an assistant before. He was a graduate assistant for now-fellow College Football Hall of Famer Earle Bruce from 1983-84 at Ohio State, a defensive backs coach for Nick Saban at MSU, then won a national title as the defensive coordinator under Jim Tressel in a second stint at OSU.

“Again, I put it in perspective that so many people helped make this happen.” Dantonio said. “Their names (are figuratively) up there as well as mine, and I can relate to that.”

Dantonio says he was in Florida this summer when Michigan State Athletic Director Alan Haller informed him that he’d be just the third Spartan coach to enter the Ring of Fame, joining Duffy Daugherty and Biggie Munn.

“Unbelievable,” is how he described his reaction. “For my name to be up there among the greatest Spartans in history, again, it speaks to a lot of different people working ... but to share that, it’s a monumental thing.”

MSU was a struggling program when Dantonio arrived. In the seven years between Saban and Dantonio, the Spartans were 38-45 overall and just 19-37 in Big Ten play.

“When I first came here as the head coach, I pointed to the past success — the opportunity to be successful here,” Dantonio said. “There was that opportunity and I can say the same probably now. You’ve been successful in the past. Once you’ve done something once, there’s always a better percentage (chance) that you can do it again. So when you look at those types of things, hopefully it serves as something they can chase a little bit. That’s what we did.”

Dantonio also discussed the importance of the relationships he built throughout his tenure in East Lansing.

“I got a lot of calls from people that couldn’t make it, which I totally understand," said Dantonio. "I think it points to one of the first things we tried to do as a program, which was building relationships with people. I think you have to do that because we have a shared sense of commitment, a shared sense of communication, and then — when you trust each other as people — those relationships are going to stand for a lifetime. We tried to develop those and we built into those things.

"In the early years — in ‘07, ‘08, ‘09 — we had tremendous buy-in by our players. And then you went through the ‘10, ‘11, ‘12 years and I looked at those years and that’s when we started competing for championships. And then ‘13, ‘14, ‘15, that’s when we probably started hitting our stride.”