Dantonio’s Double Timeout
Posted by kj on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
Against, my better judgment, allow me to weigh in on the Mark Dantonio double-timeout controversy. (I’m still trying my best to finally take advantage of that “be controversial to increase your blog’s traffic” advice I read somewhere.)
Adam Rittenberg summarizes the facts of the case:
Leading 42-7 entering the fourth quarter, Penn State continued to attack downfield as backup quarterback Pat Devlin threw a 59-yard touchdown pass to Deon Butler. Then, with Michigan State down 31 points in the closing minute, Spartans head coach Mark Dantonio called two timeouts with nine seconds left, making Penn State wait a little longer before beginning its Rose Bowl celebration.
The key points, in my book, are (1) the game was “entering the fourth quarter” and (2) the backup quarterback was in the game. Penn State took possession of the ball at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Regardless of the score, you cannot expect any college football team to start running the ball into the line with a full quarter of a football game remaining. Like almost any team would in the same situation, Penn State chose to use the time remaining to get its backup quarterback (and next year’s starting quarterback) some more snaps in a game situation. On a 3rd-and-6 play, Devlin saw a receiver open downfield and threw the ball. You can hardly expect the Nittany Lion coaches to tell him to run the offense, but not to throw the ball if he sees a receiver open deep.
When asked whether the two timeouts he called with 9 seconds left were in retaliation to the final Penn State touchdown pass, Dantonio said the following:
“There’s no motivation there. I think the problem was earlier in the game. I was just trying to give our guys a rest.”
By any objective standard, Mark Dantonio has had phenomenal success in his first two seasons as MSU’s coach. He took a team that finished 4-8 two years ago and has proceeded to compile a record of 16-9 to date. Ironically, though, this incident, coupled with the exchange through the media with Mike Hart after last year’s loss to Michigan, has created the risk that Dantonio is going to get stuck with the label of “bad loser.” The reply above is obviously intended to confirm that he was indeed upset with the Penn State coaches. Why else would he make a reference to “earlier in the game”? And the “give our guys rest” part is nonsensical. There were nine seconds left; one timeout is certainly sufficient to rest for a meaningless Hail Mary attempt.
I realize I’ve strayed outside standard college sports blogger territory here by taking issue with something my own team’s coach did, but I think this point is worth making: Don’t risk damaging the winning attitude you’re creating within the MSU football program by letting your emotions during/after a bad loss get the best of you.
I appreciate that Dantonio has put an emphasis on (1) playing with passion and (2) focusing on our rivals (Michigan and now, apparently, Penn State). But there are better ways to go about it. If Dantonio wants to get the team emotionally charged up for next year’s game against the Nittany Lions, I’d suggest showing them tape of MSU’s secondary getting burned for multiple long touchdowns, rather than focusing on a manufactured sportsmanship protocol violation.
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23 Responses to “Dantonio’s Double Timeout”
spartanproduceron 25 Nov 2008 at 10:52 pm 1Interesting view, but I think you’re leaving out two other “occurrences” that led to this.
1. Penn St calling time out “after” a lengthy tv timeout, as our offense is ready to snap the ball, just so they can bring their defense off the field to give them roses and prance around. That timeout was so long, they easily could have done all this during the break with no problem.
2. Penn St.’s fan base acting like we had stolen Joe Pa’s bifocals every time we picked up a first down or showed any effort in the fourth quarter. If with your logic it was ok for their backup (and next year starter) to throw td passes, then it was certainly ok for Cousins to do the same, throw sideline passes and generally compete to the end. However, their fans acted as if we were somehow doing something wrong.
Joe Pa has been running up scores and berating refs for years but gets away with it because much like Coach K in basketball he has the angelic reputation. I’m not afraid of MD being labeled a bad loser, a bad loser is someone like LLLLoyd Carr who makes excuses after losses, MD simply won’t let his program be pushed around. After watching us get pushed around for the better part of the past 30 years, I’m ok with standing up to the bullies of this league.
Now back to basketball and a coach who never stirs up such trouble. . . Izzo!!
Seeron 26 Nov 2008 at 12:27 am 2I personally loved the back to back time outs. It honestly brightened my day. I think it’s just the flip side of running your offense late in the game: why shut down and accept the worst defeat you can have when the opportunity to score points is still there? Same argument applies: he prepped a potential starter/back up to throw a hail mary against a real defense.
It’s just the opposite of what we did against Northwestern in fact. We used time outs to make sure the wildcats didn’t score in “garbage time.” This time, we used our time outs to try and score in garbage time. The common idea is that the entire game matters. Don’t be content with playing “enough” to win, but insist on competing the whole time.
Moothekowon 26 Nov 2008 at 6:41 am 3spartanproducer hit the nail on the head I think. I didn’t get the impression it was the late touchdowns/long passes – I think it was more a “You want to make our offense sit on the field and wait while you start celebrating and rubbing it in our faces – so we’re going to make your fan base wait to celebrate”. Not sure I agree with the move – but I understand why he was upset. No reason they couldn’t have waited a couple more minutes until the game was actually _over_ to begin their official celebrations.
kjon 26 Nov 2008 at 8:00 am 4Yes! Finally some controversy.
If it was the PSU timeout that motivated Dantonio, fine. But he’d be better off just saying so. In the current scenario, he’s getting labeled as a bad loser, without anyone knowing why he was really upset. All the media reports I’ve read have pointed to the 4th quarter TD pass.
You can argue that he’s being cryptic because all he cares about is motivating his team, but we all know that PR matters. (Hence Izzo’s belovedness.)
mushdammaon 26 Nov 2008 at 8:41 am 5Two quick points from a Penn State alum and HUGE Nittany Lions fan:
(1) Penn State called a timeout to get the seniors on defense an ovation from the crowd, not to celebrate the win prematurely. The stadium announcer clearly said “Thank you seniors on defense” after they called a timeout. This type of thing is done almost universally among college teams on Senior Day if the game situation allows it.
(2) Once the substitution to the backup QB was made, Michigan State still had the option of… oh, I don’t know… PLAYING DEFENSE. If MD is going to gripe about a backup QB throwing long touchdown passes instead of focusing on the millionth defensive breakdown by his secondary in that game, perhaps it’s time he found a different profession.
Moothekowon 26 Nov 2008 at 8:50 am 6Agree with you kj – being cryptic about his reasoning does look bad. It’s like the John L. Smith slap in the face. I thought it was a great jab at Weis for flat out lying to the officials about what happened to him to try to get flags thrown on MSU – but the fact that nobody in the media seemed to know why he did it and what the whole thing was about it made him a complete laughing stock.
Also – mushdamma, I think the problem was that they had a long TV timeout in which they could have said “thank you seniors” if they wanted – but instead took extra time to celebrate onfield afterwards. I’m not saying Dantonio was in the right by any means – just what I thought was going on.
huberton 26 Nov 2008 at 9:23 am 7I thnk the benefits of being viewed by the cable sports commentariat as a good loser are easily overestimated. Dantonio may be a sob but he is our sob, and you know the players love that never back down attitude. Since he also runs a tight ship and has managed to instill more discipline into the program than has existed in a decade, I say right on, particularly when playing against the sanctimonious football aristocracies like PSU. When he has turned the program into a perennial top ten program and the team hardly ever loses, then I say he should become more magnanimous in defeat. But, there’s plenty of time before that happens.
witless chumon 26 Nov 2008 at 9:57 am 8I’m with hubert. The love of the Lou Holtzs and Lee Corsos of the world and $2.99 will get you NCAA 2004 for PS2 at GameStop.
Being a bad loser isn’t half as tacky as being a bad winner, in any case.
I didn’t agree with Dantonio’s comment about rooting for OSU. I walked into the room as my wife was watching the OSU/U of M game and I said, “Did anything good for MSU happen?” That’s the proper attitude to take. But Dantonio seems to have an actual dislike of U of M.
But like that instance, I love Dantonio for this. I don’t want sober reflection from my Spartans coach so much as from my Spartans blogger.
Coach D needs to work on disliking ND and Charlie Weissm though. Maybe some sort of “A Clockwork Orange”-style experiment to make him believe he is coaching the second half of the 2006 game, but can’t wake up, can’t move, can’t scream and can’t call Caulcrick’s number.
Rewertson 26 Nov 2008 at 10:34 am 9In my opinion fans and media have no right to question when or why a coach uses a time out. In sports a coach has a set number of timeouts per game, and he can use them anytime he chooses, even if it is for the simple goal of sending his team, and the other team a message.
I agree with the PSU fan that the timeout called by PSU was to get their seniors an ovation. However, this ovation was followed by the seniors taking as much time as possible while still on the field, and roses started getting handed out. As someone else pointed out, the ovation should have occurred during the TV timeout. And no roses should have been handed out until the clock read zeros.
Coach D simply wanted his players to get an extended view of the celebration. It will make his players and coaches that much hungrier next year. He also wanted to show PSU that he was not okay with the roses being handed out prematurely.
I do agree with kj that Coach D should have addressed this more straight-forwardly.
Having said that, if he would have came out and said, “I called both timeouts to show how unhappy I was with the roses being handed out before the game was over.” Would anyone have not still been saying, “bad loser” ? I doubt it. Its a no win situation for the coach, but if anything I think it should add some zest to this stale, alleged, “rivalry”.
Rewertson 26 Nov 2008 at 10:43 am 10One thing I would like to add. Lets please stop talking about the 2006 MSU/ND football game. I have been seeing references to this game a lot recently, and well, it makes me want to throw up.
The other day I was reading a preview of the Old Spice Classic (probably a link via kj) and it referred to the 2006 MSU/Gonzaga triple OT game. My memory of this game is not as bad as the ND game, but someone made a reference to Suton’s missed lay-up that would have sealed the win. Somehow I had blocked that out of my mind as my memories of that game are all about Ager and Morrison lighting it up from downtown. Needless to say, when I read about Suton’s lay-up I was immediately stricken with nausea accompanied by diaphoresis.
Benon 26 Nov 2008 at 10:58 am 11I’m in total, 100% agreement with kj here. I love Dantonio, but the timeouts made me cringe, because it was so clearly bush league. We had just gotten our asses kicked out there; calling the two timeouts as some sort of “revenge” seems enormously petty and fairly pathetic to me.
On a related note, this is football. It’s our responsibility to stop their offense, not theirs to rein things in when they’ve got the game in hand. Paterno and Penn State got royally screwed in ‘94 for refusing to run up the score against Indiana, Northwestern, et. al., and I cannot blame him at all for refusing to call off the guns when his team is still, at least theoretically, in the national championship picture.
I think that some of the semi-controversial things Dantonio has said and done this season have been either misunderstood (e.g., the “Go Bucks!” thing, where I think it’s pretty clear he was joking) or blown out of proportion (the bit about the players not wearing ties on the walk over from the Kellogg Center), but appearances do matter. He’ll never match the level of crazy that JLS exhibited, but I’m sure people around the country are scratching their heads, thinking, “what the hell is in the water in East Lansing?” He needs to learn when to dial it down a notch or two, IMO.
kjon 26 Nov 2008 at 11:04 am 12Agree on the “Go Bucks” thing. I think his main point was that he wasn’t going to worry about things he couldn’t control. The rest of it was just an attempt to be light-hearted about it that was easily misconstrued.
Rewertson 26 Nov 2008 at 11:28 am 13I agree about the “Go Bucks” fiasco. I also agree that PSU shuld have no bad feelings about scoring the points in the 4th. A backup QB needs to get some time in a game, and when your team is up by that many points you have perfect opportunity to get him in the game. There was still over 12 minutes left at that point, there is no reason they shouldn’t have been trying to move the ball.
Stukaon 26 Nov 2008 at 1:04 pm 14mushdamma -
“(2) Once the substitution to the backup QB was made, Michigan State still had the option of… oh, I don’t know… PLAYING DEFENSE. If MD is going to gripe about a backup QB throwing long touchdown passes instead of focusing on the millionth defensive breakdown by his secondary in that game, perhaps it’s time he found a different profession.”
That was not Dantonio’s gripe at all. Dantonio was specifically asked in his press conference if he took issue with the deep pass in the fourth quarter. He said “No, not at all. You have to keep playing. I’m just disappointed we didn’t make the play.”
As others have said above, there were other reasons why he probably took the timeout. I don’t see the big deal. If Penn State wants to hand out roses before the game is over, go for it. I wouldn’t. If MSU wants to use two timeouts in a row at the end of a game and try to score, go for it. I wouldn’t. Non-issue in my mind; I think a lot of people are getting worked up for nothing.
kjon 26 Nov 2008 at 1:11 pm 15From a sportsmanship angle, I agree with Stuka’s laissez faire philosophy. This is the Big Ten, not pee wee football. My concern is the PR side of things; how a coach is perceived by the public does ultimately impact the program.
Anyway, good discussion on this one. I’ve enjoyed reading everyone else’s take on the situation.
EGon 26 Nov 2008 at 1:45 pm 16All I’m sayin is, I was at the game and my feet were numb. And MD out of nowhere felt the need to call 2 TOs. They served no purpose and did nothing but delay the celebration and let many PSU fans freeze even more. If he wants to make this a real rivalry, he took the first step in pissin’ off a lot of fans.
I don’t think UM, OSU or ND got booed as loudly as MD did.
Basically, I’m disappointed he threw this fit considering last year Joe Paterno graciously waited to greet him on the field after the game while MD was too busying getting showered with Gatorade…
MainLionon 26 Nov 2008 at 2:13 pm 17[Joe Pa has been running up scores and berating refs for years but gets away with it because much like Coach K in basketball he has the angelic reputation.]
Disagree here. Joe had a habit–for a long time–of putting in backups too early, calling off the dogs too early, etc. From 2000-2004, it cost the team wins (though admittedly the teams weren’t stellar anyway).
There’s a reason folks question PSU, and not, e.g., Oklahoma, for running up the score: because Joe does not normally do it, nor does he let it happen. Perhaps because he was in the booth, and not in anyone’s face (sitting too far from Galen and “Joe Jr.”?).
PSUFanon 26 Nov 2008 at 5:06 pm 18It was a very classless thing for Dantonio to do. If he was unhappy, fine then just say so. As mentioned above, PSU called a timeout to honor the seniors who have had an amazing season. Why shouldn’t they be given their moment to celebrate.
In response to spartanproducer, you have no idea why Penn State fans were booing and unhappy with the timeouts. It wasn’t because MSU was still trying to score points at all. Coming from someone who was standing there in the 15 degree weather, it was because he was unreasonably dragging out the coldest game in Beaver Stadium history. I am sorry but one hail mary pass and extra point may have given them 7 pts on the scoreboard but it would not have won the game. Call one timeout if you want but there was absolutely no reason to call two. The fans were unhappy because we were freezing and wanted to see our team being presented with their well deserved trophy.
Also, if he is mad that Penn State scored with their backup quarterback in then maybe he should take a look at his defense. If the second string quarterback can score on you that easily, then maybe your team is the one with the problem. It was not an attempt to simply run the score up.
I lost all respect for Dantonio for calling those timeouts.
Zekeon 26 Nov 2008 at 7:52 pm 19While I can appreciate that it was cold at the game, I respectfully submit that no one made the fans stick around. The weather did not have any bearing whatsoever on the situation. Wear wool socks.
Dantonio did not throw a fit. See the above comment from Stuka regarding his press conference comments. He simply played until the end. I don’t believe that any coach should stop playing simply because the game is out of hand. Fitzgerald played until the final seconds of the NU-MSU game down by 17. Tiller did it at the end of the Purdue-MSU game down by 21. There’s a reason the game is played for 60 minutes.
spartanproduceron 26 Nov 2008 at 9:18 pm 20So PSU fan says you all were unhappy because you “were cold” and had to wait longer to celebrate??
Puh-leeze, The MSU-U of M game in ‘01 and the Penn State-MSU game in ‘07 were both extremely cold and you know what?? I didn’t feel a thing at the end of either game cause we were celebrating. If you all were tough enough to spend three and a half hours in the cold, I’m sure a few more minutes didn’t matter (also if the cold was that bad, shouldn’t you be mad at your own team for taking the “let’s honor the defense time out”) can’t get mad at one team for dragging the game out and not get mad at the other.
TMadison25on 27 Nov 2008 at 9:55 am 21Why is so much being made of this? Dantonio’s “class” shouldn’t be in question, and neither should Penn State’s passing attack in the 2nd half. Why Penn St. fans are upset after handing it to us is beyond me.
Congrats to Penn St. on a great 11-1 season. More importantly, how about the Spartans not fizzling towards the end, losing to two great Big 10 teams and finishing 9-3.
I am excited for their bowl game, but seriously… it’s FINALLY time for some Spartan basketball.
Summers will have a big game today v. the Terps.
Go Green!
Benon 27 Nov 2008 at 11:08 am 22Ok, my criticism of Dantonio has nothing to do with how PSU fans were apparently sooooooo cold. Really, as fans of teams in the northern part of the country, we’ve all sat through cold games . . . and if my team was about to win the Big Ten, I’d happily deal with a few extra minutes of delay even if it was far, far colder than it was in State College on Saturday.
Have fun at the Rose Bowl, but read what you’ve written again. You wusses sound like the wussiest wussies that have ever wussed.
Rewertson 27 Nov 2008 at 6:33 pm 23lol ben….”that have ever wussed.” i love it.
I again just want to point to these PSU fans that the timeout to congratulate the seniors was unnecessary because of the TV timeout that had just finished when PSU called their timeout. And again, if the roses would have stayed stowed away until the game was over those timeouts never would have happened.