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Was Mark Dantonio the latest B1G coach to not understand basic math?
Published:
Oh no. Not Mark Dantonio, too.
Last week, Kirk Ferentz raised some eyebrows when he said that he said his team needed to score twice when it was down 14-6. The Hawkeyes unsuccessfully attempted a field goal and Ferentz had egg on his face in the postgame press conference.
It appears he’s not the only coach who struggled with basic math in the middle of a game. Mark Dantonio was asked why his team went for a field goal when it trailed 30-10 in the fourth quarter.
This was his answer:
Dantonio said he kicked a FG down 20 with 10 minutes left because it would make it a two-score game. I'm not sure the staff did the math.
— Graham Couch (@Graham_Couch) October 29, 2016
Well, 17 points is not a two-score deficit. Like Ferentz, Dantonio’s decision to kick for admittedly wrong reasons is certainly odd.
For a coach of Dantonio’s stature, mistakes like that are few and far between. There’s always a chance that he was thinking of a different situation or that he misspoke.
Still, Dantonio is paid millions of dollars not to say things like that in that moment. That’ll make Saturday’s loss to rival Michigan sting a little more.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.