MSU's Rossi Says Michigan Rivalry 'Trumps' Other Ones He's Experienced
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EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Michigan State defensive coordinator Joe Rossi has seen what college football rivalries are like at every single level. The Battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy is the best he's seen.
He played Division III football in Pennsylvania at Allegheny College, where he says the rivalry was with Wittenberg, a school in Ohio. Rossi began his coaching career at D-III Thiel College, whose rivalry he says was with Grove City. At FCS Maine, it was against New Hampshire.
This is not even Rossi's first time playing for a Paul Bunyan-themed trophy in the Big Ten. His most recent stop before MSU was Minnesota, who plays Wisconsin for Paul Bunyan's Axe.
"This one trumps all of those," Rossi said about Michigan State-Michigan. "It's just different."
On Wednesday, he talked about his perspective on the biggest game of MSU's season as a coach, what his defense needs to do better, and other things.
A full video of Rossi's press conference can be viewed below.
Watch Joe Rossi here:
In addition, a partial transcription of what was said at the beginning of the presser has been provided.
Transcript
Q: Coach, I would say that it's never a perfect time to face adversity, but can an argument be made that rivalry week is a time to kind of crystallize the division and lock in a little bit because the quote-unquote stakes are higher right now?
ROSSI: Yeah, I think any time you get in a situation where you're going against a rival, it kind of pulls guys together a little bit, grabs their attention. Not that they weren't together and didn't have their attention before, but I think it just kind of takes it a little bit to the next level.
Q: I watch Michigan's offense, there's a lot of the little screens and sort of checkdowns and ding-and-dunk kind of plays. With tackling, with the problems you've had, it seems like that could be an issue.
I know live tackling [in practice] and things are limited, but how do you improve that aspect of your defense and just the tackling open field sort of stuff? What are the ways that you guys can correct that going into this game?
ROSSI: Well, first, don't let them get out there. Tackling is about eliminating space, right? Space is the enemy of the defense. How do you do that? You set edges. That's one way, right?
The second way you do that is you play with incredible effort. Then, when you get to the point of attack, you've got to trust low tackling. We're a low-tackle operation, but in the last couple weeks, we haven't trusted it. So we've got to trust it. We've got to do it.
It was something that was a point of emphasis in yesterday's practice, which is a heavy first and second-down day for us.
All the positions really hit that at the beginning of practice, because if you try to go high on guys out in the space, your chances of success are much lower than if you go lower.
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A 2025 graduate from Michigan State University, Cotsonika brings a wealth of experience covering the Spartans from Rivals and On3 to his role as Michigan State Spartans Beat Writer on SI. At Michigan State, he was also a member of the world-renowned Spartan marching band for two seasons.
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