On the eve of bowl season, the nation's top collegiate football programs are grinding and gearing up for their most important matchups of the year. But the No. 3-seeded team in the country, Michigan State, seemingly still isn’t getting the respect it deserves – a claim perhaps best proven by the fact that Sports Illustrated still doesn’t know its head coach’s name.
On a regional cover of SI’s 2015 College Football Playoff special edition, coach Mark Dantonio is identified as “Mike Dantonio.” That’s right, he got mixed up with this guy, Mike D'Antoni, the former NBA head coach known for his quick-paced Phoenix Suns teams of the mid-2000s and for, well, bringing the Los Angeles Lakers to the brink of disaster.
Sports Illustrated has fact checkers, so it’s quite unclear how this mistake made it to press. But, as The Detroit News writer Matt Charboneau points out, the error fits perfectly into the Spartans’ chip-on-the-shoulder mentality, which (Mark) Dantonio discussed on Wednesday.
“The chip on our shoulder is relative to us, how we play, how we respond," he told reporters. "[It] has nothing to do with who we are playing against, because we have a great deal of respect for everybody we play against."
Sports Illustrated has since apologized for the incident, stating Thursday that the “Spartans-themed issues are being reprinted and will be available on newsstands shortly. Sports Illustrated apologizes to Mark Dantonio, Michigan State and its fans for the error."
Oops.
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