Michigan State football: Where are all the (Spartan) Dawgs?

After throwing around the term “SD4L” for the past few years, it seems like Michigan State football needs more actual “Spartan Dawgs”.

Much like most of his tenure, former Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker was all too focused on what was going on #online. He watered down the former team-only nickname for Spartan Stadium, The Woodshed. He, for lack of a better term, drowned the deep water mantra after beating a Miami team having an existential crisis. Worst of all, he devalued what it meant to be a Spartan Dawg.

The mantra had broken contain long before Tucker took the head job four years ago. Understandably so, it was how Mark Dantonio set the standard for the program that Jonathan Smith will be measured on. Much like everything else, Tucker used the Spartan Dawg identity not as a non-negotiable for putting on the Spartan helmet, but as a marketing gimmick.

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Everyone suddenly became a Spartan Dawg. Big-name recruit? Spartan Dawg. Low-grade depth transfer because you missed on big name recruit? Spartan Dawg.

Coming to Michigan State makes you a Spartan, but it doesn’t make you a Spartan Dawg.

Since 2021, the inception of the transfer portal as we know it today, Michigan State has seen 97 players enter the transfer portal, with the 2024 cycle counting 39 players per 247Sports. SD4L, right?

The past four years turned up to down, good to bad to worse, and from everything earned to everything given. Of the 39 players exiting this season, who would you truly be comfortable saying is a Spartan Dawg? Sure, not all entered the portal at the 11th hour expecting to capitalize on perceived value from an agent looking for another 15 percent. Not all entered the portal off bad advice and scheduled a visit with their school’s biggest rival. But who are you willing to go to bat to say they are a dawg?

Keon Coleman is a rarity. In a lot of ways, but in this sense specifically. Yeah, when Keon left, I understood it, but was still frustrated by it, as were many others. Most would say that he wasn’t a Spartan Dawg in the immediate aftermath. Then we saw the love he gave back to MSU, we saw him come back to the Breslin, we saw the glowing comments about Coach Hawk. In his draft interview, he credits Michigan State football for making him into who he is. That’s a Spartan Dawg.

There isn’t a defined checklist of what it means to be a Spartan Dawg, but you can tell who is and who isn’t one. You can tell the ones who are close, and you can tell the ones who aren’t.

Personally? I’m wiping the slate clean. The exodus post spring ball saw thought to be Dawgs to never have been ones at all. Much like the OKG, you know it when you see it. I need to see it going into fall camp and the month of September.

In this new era of Michigan State football under Jonathan Smith, we’ll see who really wants to cement themselves as a Spartan Dawg, like the ones who actually won something before them.