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Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio laughs after a drill during their preseason practice at their team practice facility in East Lansing, on Monday, August 15, 2016.

(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)

EAST LANSING -- He may not show up in the credits of Thursday night's inaugural episode of "Green and White Days: Inside Michigan State Training Camp", but Mark Dantonio says he has a role in the production of the television show about his football team.

"I get to be a producer," Dantonio said as the Spartans opened camp nearly two weeks ago. "So I can go 'cut'."

Dantonio insists he's done just that since cameras for the all-access show made their way into his team's 2016 training camp.

The show makes its debut at 7 p.m. on BTN. It's the first of three scheduled 30-minute episodes that will air each Thursday between now and the start of the regular season.

Since Michigan State opened fall camp on August 8, cameras have been a ubiquitous -- and new -- presence in every aspect of the team's camp. They've been at practices, team meetings, the training room and spending time with players in their dorm rooms.

It marks new territory for Dantonio, who has admittedly in the past been reticent about allowing cameras into the Duffy Daugherty Building. Michigan State turned down an offer from HBO last year to do a similar all-access show about the 2015 fall camp.

But he's changed his tune since then, as all-access shows become more common in college football. Showtime has done series about Notre Dame and Florida State.

The fact that BTN is owned in part by the conference's schools gives Dantonio a level of control over what's filmed and what isn't. The network did its first all-access show last year, about Ohio State, and Dantonio said he was impressed.

"I thought what they did last year when they took care of Ohio State down there, I thought that was an impressive showing," Dantonio said. "I thought if we could do something like that it would be good for the program."

When BTN approached Michigan State about a show for 2016, Dantonio said he took a couple of days to think about it before deciding the positives outweigh the negatives.

"I think the current players here need to learn how to handle themselves around cameras a little bit," Dantonio said. "That's a positive for them. But I also think it shows Michigan State's program, and as long as you're doing it right, it's good for recruiting and it's good for our fan base."

The BTN crew has been providing snippets of the show on its Twitter page. The most entertaining is a failed attempt by Michigan State's freshmen to sing the school's fight song.