There’s no playbook for this, no easy solution, no timetable. Mark Dantonio is facing his biggest challenge at Michigan State, a multi-layered crisis that ranges from on-field competitiveness, to public perception, to far more troubling legal issues involving three players and one staff member.
Dantonio’s leadership will be tested as it never has, and if this was merely a matter of rebounding from a 3-9 season, I’d say his program would recover in due time. But the longer uncertainty swirls, the tougher it gets, and the tougher it gets, the more uncertainty swirls.
Michigan State is stuck at the moment, which is why the school’s leaders have been mostly, uncomfortably silent.