46 days until Michigan football: Sending Mark Dantonio into retirement
There’s much anticipation heading into the Michigan Wolverines football season, and TheWolverine.com is counting down the days until the Sept. 2 opener against East Carolina. We’ll discuss current Michigan events, the upcoming season and/or take a look at a significant number that correlates with how many days remain until kickoff, whether it be a player’s jersey number, a year, a date, a score, etc.
With 46 days until Michigan football kicks off the 2023 season, we take a look at the 46th win of the Jim Harbaugh era. It was also the unofficial sendoff of someone who had been a thorn in the side of the Wolverines for over a decade.
Michigan grabbed a 44-10 blowout win over rival Michigan State and head coach Mark Dantonio in 2019, which would wind up being his last rivalry tilt against the Wolverines in his career.
The Spartans got out to an early 7-0 lead in the first quarter before Michigan scored 17-straight points to take a 17-7 lead into the second half. The Wolverines kept their foot on the accelerator, outscoring MSU 27-3 in the second half. Michigan even twisted the knife with a 39-yard touchdown pass from Shea Patterson to Cornelius Johnson with 2:33 to go.
Dantonio is the best football coach in MSU history, leading the team to three Big Ten titles, a College Football Playoff appearance and an 8-5 record against the Wolverines. But every great era has an expiration date. After going 12-2 and making the Cotton Bowl in 2015, MSU followed it up with a 3-9 campaign in 2016, a 10-3 season in 2017 and back-to-back 7-6 seasons in 2018-19. It started to draw the ire of the Spartan faithful, who wondered if the program had already reached and left its peak.
He also lost three of his last four games against Michigan.
Dantonio doubled down on his philosophies and avoided making big changes to his coaching staff, choosing to instead “weather the storm.”
“From a leadership stand(point), you must stand vigilant – that’s what leaders must do,” Dantonio said after the loss to Michigan. “You must stand vigilant, you must take responsibility, but you must stay the course, too. And you must be strong. And I keep asking ourselves, just like I ask our football team – and I didn’t ask them this game – how strong are you? How strong are you? Can you weather storms? If you can’t weather storms, this might not be the situation you want to put yourself in.
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“We weather the storm, that’s whether you’re a leader on this football team internally as a team member, collectively as the coaching staff or as the head football coach.
“I’ll weather the storm.”
Dantonio weathered the storm until Feb. 4, 2020, when he stunningly retired from his post one day before National Signing Day. Weeks earlier, he collected a $4.3 million retention bonus from the university. When asked if it had anything to do with the wrongful termination lawsuit of former staffer Curtis Blackwell, he refused to comment and said his retirement was cause for celebration.
Dantonio was replaced by Mel Tucker, who has an 18-14 record in three seasons on the job. Tucker has two wins over Michigan and an 11-2 record in 2021 under his belt – earning him a 10-year, $9.5 million contract after the season – but is 7-12 in his two other years. We will see which direction the program heads from here under his watch after a 5-7 season in 2022.
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