I know that focus has turned from last week’s loss to preparing for Indiana in 2 days, but I had to take some time to gain perspective before writing this post. I spent Saturday night and most of Sunday so angry that I couldn’t even fathom writing something appropriate for my blog. Then, I had some travel technology issues that further delayed my post. However, I’m ready to let loose now in the form of an open letter to the coach…

Dear Coach Dantonio,

I’m writing you as a concerned and frustrated Spartan fan. I was born wearing green and white and have been going to games since I was a little girl. Even while I was raised near Ann Arbor, I was always a proud MSU fan – even when I took flack. I’ll always remember hearing about MSU going to the “toilet bowl” while my friends were watching UM on New Year’s Day. I never lost faith though and continued to attend games regularly, even during my time there throughout the horrible John L Smith era. Now, living in Chicagoland, we are still season ticket holders and come back for many games in addition to attending road and bowl games. There is rarely a Sunday where I haven’t lost my voice as the result of cheering on my team that weekend.

That being said, I was really disappointed in your remarks last week regarding fan reaction to the product you’re putting on the field. As a reminder, here it is: http://www.freep.com/article/20120926/SPORTS07/309260129/michigan-state-mark-Dantonio-tells-fans-to-stay-positive. Should fans stay positive? Yes. Have you given them much of a reason to? No! Therefore, my response to your feelings: It’s our money and we’ll boo if we want to! We’ve been drinking your kool-aid about wanting to be an elite program. We’re paying our mandatory “voluntary” donations just to have the right to buy tickets that you raised the price of. You and Mark Hollis are now asking for more money to improve the stadium while many are wondering if the new scoreboards were worth it – or are really a distraction. As we’re committing time and money to this team and university, don’t you think we want to be positive?!? Problem is, we need a reason to be…and beating up on the directional schools doesn’t count. We want a team that plays with heart and wants to win, and this team doesn’t seem to possess those qualities.

So, I tried to go into last weekend with an open mind. After 2 lackluster games in a row, I wanted to believe that you had some issues figured out for the B1G Opener. I had put my anger from the ND and EMU games aside knowing that our goals were still in tact. But I was also cautiously optimistic based on what I had seen in the first 3rd of the season. While tailgating, my friend Chris gave a rousing speech with the theme that “it’s time.” A few of his sentiments were that it’s time to: see this massive arm we’ve heard Maxwell has, stop missing field goals, have some creativity on offense, and for the defense to live up to who everyone thought they were (including Adams stepping up instead of reading the press about himself). He couldn’t be more right!

We went to the game with a feeling of excitement in the air. We knew OSU wasn’t an easy opponent, but had faith in our defensive game plan and hope for something more from the offense…then the game happened. All season, we’ve had to settle for field goals instead of getting into the endzone – and it bit us again with a missed FG. Conroy’s lack of dependability is becoming alarming.

The defense seems to be reading too much of the pre-season press clippings about them instead of looking hungry on the field. They seemed to have forgotten how to contain in the backfield and are suffering from missed tackles. Johnny Adams has also been disappointing all season, with the latest example being when he got burned down the sideline for a long pass turned TD.

The offensive play calling was atrocious. Dan Roushar expects the receivers to break tackles to get a first down after calling for plays that are short, which makes no sense based on the play we’ve seen so far. We seemed to do some things that worked in the 1st quarter, and then abandoned them for the rest of the game. There is no creativity as Roushar basically calls 4 plays. Whenever they got momentum in a drive, it was killed by a combo of bad passes and drops. We have not scored more than 3 points in the 1st 1/2 of our last 3 games. With Bell alone on the field, this stat mystifies me…until I look at the stats from the last game: 34 total rushing yards on 22 attempts and 42 passing attempts. Clearly, that’s a good idea with a young QB. What happened to balance? What happened to run first? Bell is definitely not being used to his potential this season!

I’ll be the first to admit that the refs didn’t help anything and had a couple REALLY bad calls, but I refuse to blame them for this loss. If MSU is a team with Rose Bowl aspirations, they never should have been in such a close match-up at home. Their lack of discipline at times – namely in 2 ineligible receiver down field calls – is unacceptable. Additionally, when you only get 3 points off of 3 turnovers (while not turning it over at all), you deserve to lose by not capitalizing on those mistakes.

I listened to your press conference and laughed as you said you were proud of the team. You said they need to stay balanced. Since that doesn’t happen under Roushar, how do you plan to change that without firing your buddy Dan? You said that Maxwell threw effectively and played well enough to win. Did you conveniently look away every time he airmailed a pass and/or couldn’t scramble to get any positive yards? You said we left some plays on the field. There’s no doubt that’s true. Fans want to see action and changes though, not admission of problems.

As you enter the Indiana game, please show us something to give fans hope! It shouldn’t be hard given the opponent. I know you’ve changed up the WR’s, which is great but won’t matter if Maxwell can’t get them the ball. How about a change at QB? Why does that seem to be out of the question? Can we at least shake something up when it comes to the play calls? One can only hope.

I wanted nothing more than to spend New Year’s cheering on my beloved Spartans at the Rose Bowl this year! We’ve been so close the last 2 years and everyone seemed to have hope entering this season. I don’t know if that got into the player’s heads and they’re under preforming or if they just didn’t deserve the hype they got in the first place. Either way, as we start a new month of football, I can only hope that the team looks better than it did in September and I no longer have a reason to boo!

Sincerely – a concerned Spartan fan and Alum