Hey Joe's MSU camp diaries: Dantonio hires a hypnotist

One of the first rules of covering a football team is to go to the offensive line for quotes, as much as possible (shout-out to Gordie Niebylski, you remain missed on the MSU beat), and one of the things you can expect to hear from offensive linemen is a good bonding story. No group is better at breaking up the monotony of the off-season or camp (or even film study – MSU offensive line coach Mark Staten sometimes has everyone stand up and shake out the drudgery for a few minutes in the meeting room).

Offensive linemen go on "grub crawls" (shout-out to Shawn Kamm, most renowned eater in recent MSU history), do unintentional Hell's Angels parodies on their mopeds and, as chronicled this week in a Sports Illustrated feature on the MSU O-line, enjoy sleeveless paintball (shout-out to Jack Allen, who had a welt on his arm for weeks that finally went away a few days ago).

"I was bleeding," Allen said of the outing. "It was fun, though."

The whole MSU offensive line got into playing Texas Hold 'Em against each other on their iPads during the 2014 camp, and this year Mark Dantonio got them chess boards. Allen reports that Benny McGowan, Miguel Machado and Chase Gianacakos are pacing the group in that arena.

Dantonio is big on breaking things up for everyone, of course, and there's no better example than his alligator stunt before MSU's 2012 Outback Bowl win over Georgia (alligator trainer dresses up in MSU football uniform, alligator loose near practice field after practice, trainer sprints to him as players think he's one of their teammates, trainer grapples with gator, trainer gets clamped on in the process).

And that brings us to Wednesday night at MSU's camp and a new one on the players -- and some quotes from offensive linemen to put it in perspective. Dantonio brought in a hypnotist to talk to the team and to, well, hypnotize some of the team. Apparently, it worked.

"Man, it was amazing -- I've never seen anything like that in my life," Staten said.

"That was crazy," Jack Allen said.

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"I'm not joking around, it was one of the crazier things I've ever seen," Brian Allen said. "The guy says, 'You've got to go with it or it's not gonna work.' And this guy had people doing weird stuff. I'm not messing around. It was trippy, I can't even explain it."

But he tried.

"He's like 'Pretend you're racing a horse. This is your ticket, the louder you cheer, the better your horse is,'" Brian Allen said. "And they're like half awake, half sleeping and they're just going nuts. He had them petting a bird, stuff like that … it was weird."

Among the victims, er, subjects were Malik McDowell, RJ Williamson and walk-on receiver Brandon Sowards ("Brandon Sowards was the man," Jack Allen said), and they were apparently all fine at Thursday's practice. They were out of sorts Wednesday night.

"The guy is like, 'You guys can go back to your seats now, but any time I say Western Michigan, I want you to tell me that I'm a liar and this whole thing is fake,'" Brian Allen recalled. "So he says, 'Thanks for coming to the show and good luck against Western Michigan.' And all the kids who did it, like Trevon Pendleton is like, 'Hey!' Malik McDowell is like, 'Shut up! Get out of here, you're a liar!' And they weren't messing around. And you knew they weren't faking because it was like the most innocent kids on the team who were up there. Who don't normally talk. And they were in the back row screaming."

For a taste of what it was like, check out Chris Frey's Twitter timeline and a short video of Williamson and others laughing hysterically after being prompted to do so by the hypnotist. Shout-out to that hypnotist.

Contact Joe Rexrode: jrexrode@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joerexrode. Check out his MSU blog at freep.com/heyjoe.

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