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8/8/07-Football
You wouldn't peg Misch for a linebacker
By DAVID BIRKETT Of The Oakland Press
EAST LANSING--Slap on another 20 pounds, gnarl up the hands a little bit, watch him spit blood once or twice and you'll call Jonathan Misch a linebacker.
Hear his story, though, and you'd never peg him for football's meanest position.
A redshirt freshman from Orchard Lake St. Mary's, Misch is Michigan State's likely opening-day starter at weak-side linebacker after climbing the depth chart from nowhere last spring.
He's also a concert pianist who likes Josh Groban, loves his mom and is honest enough to admit he doesn't have a clue about the complexities of the Spartans' Cover-4 defense.
"I'm a very unique individual," Misch said at MSU media day Tuesday. "My mom did a really good job of raising me, kind of getting me involved with everything. I was in tennis for a while, soccer, started playing piano, I wrestled, I was on the crew team in high school. Pretty much at one point in my life I've kind of done everything."
For most of his youth, football was little more than a way for the highly-intelligent, universally-successful kid with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to expend some energy. He never watched the sport before Barry Sanders, and prefers "SpongeBob SquarePants" or "MythBusters" to it now.
As a 12-year-old, Misch was visiting a cousin who recently took up the keyboard when he asked how to play "The Entertainer." Thirty minutes later, he had the song down. By high school, he graduated to Chopin and last year played "Fantasie Impromptu" in a linebacker meeting for teammates.
"I just kind of accelerated really quickly," he said. "After four years I was playing what most people play after about 10 years."
In sports, Misch made similar prodigal gains.
A second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, he placed second in the world championships as a 12- and 13-year-old. As a wrestler, he won more than 100 matches and qualified for the state meet as a senior. The same year, his four-person crew boat took gold in the Midwest finals.
Football didn't come quite as easy for Misch, who rarely played as a junior and said his father, Carl, once suggested he give up the sport to focus on wrestling.
Misch said those words served as motivation for the 14-sack senior season that earned him scholarship offers from MSU, Washington and Eastern Michigan, and still drive him now.
"I like to think people are behind me when I do things," he said. "When somebody tells me I can't do something, that's probably the one thing that somebody can do to make me do something. If somebody says you cannot do this, yes I can, and I'm going to."
To that end, it's no surprise Misch caught everyone's attention with his constant playmaking in spring practice. His non-stop motor and 192-pound frame -- suitable size for his kicker roommate, not a Big Ten linebacker -- even prompted new coach Mark Dantonio to compare him to Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert.
"Jon's a guy that in spring practice he went out there and every time you put the film on you would just see him making plays, wiggling through this, playing with 100 percent effort," Dantonio said Tuesday. "That's all I can tell you. He's a football player. They come in all sizes and shapes. But I can tell you he will give his all out there and that's what we're about."
While the Lambert analogy didn't register with Misch, who said he's never heard of the Steelers great, the starting spot did.
He spent the summer chowing down on Care packages from his mother, Lori, and added 15 pounds on a diet that included macaroni and cheese, goulash and southwestern egg rolls.
Earlier this week, he weighed in at 207 pounds, his heaviest ever, but still lighter than every potential starting linebacker in the Big Ten.
Defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi said he's not concerned about Misch's weight or the pounding he'll take as an every-down player.
"We're not going to tell him to run into 300-pound linemen," Narduzzi said. "If he does that he will be a bad linebacker. We're going to let him run around people."
Misch said he's not worried about his size, either. In fact, he likes the idea of being the smallest, most unique linebacker in the league.
"The defense that this coaching staff has brought in is really my style," he said. "It's a very high-speed defense, very aggressive defense, get after the quarterback, get after the run, and that's exactly what I like to do. I like to run around, I don't like to slow down."
In football or life.
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