One of the hardest things about being the guy who roots Michigan State football is managing expectations. Not in the corporate sense, "How do we provide the minimal amount of effort to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction?" "By managing expectations sir, please don't hit me again." I don't expect to beat our rivals every year, I didn't for a long time expect to go to a bowl, let alone every year.
Managing expectations is easy when you suck, as we have at times in the past.What should we expect this week?You should expect to lose, we are 2005 Michigan State and Ohio State is 2005 Ohio State. Managing expectations is easy when you're Oklahoma who I'd offer as the most successful program of the last 15 years. Although something tells me there is an art to keeping a fan base from eating it's own tail when you're Bob Stoops, I know there is for Tom Izzo.
After watching us destroy an FAU team that I don't think could beat half the teams in FCS, it feels like a good time to issue the warning of cautious optimism. MSU played amazingly on Saturday and I think they will continue to improve throughout the season. They are young at LB and a couple critical positions on the Offensive Line. However, I'm concerned as always that the new mantra of our fanbase will be that we can and should win the Big Ten this year again. Allow me to be crystal clear on this, I think we can, but it is not going to be easy or without some heart stoppage.
This year we do not have the 2010 schedule that was so soft you could lay your head down and grab a nap. This year we have a schedule designed by Satan himself, Jim Delaney or at least one of his lackeys. This year our October schedule is murderous, we play at Ohio State on the 1st, Michigan at home on the 15th, Wisconsin at home on the 22nd and Nebraska at Nebraska on the 29th. My expectation is that we go 2-2 during this stretch, 1-3 would be a bit disappointing, but I could see it. 3-1 would be pretty awesome and I could see it. 0-4 and 4-0 seem impossible.
While October is obviously going to be a gauntlet, November could be a sneaky gauntlet. November will be like when you show up to help someone move out of an apartment and after you move the apartment they're like "Oh hey man, see I got this storage unit and we just gotta go pick up a few things, you got time for that right?" October is moving the apartment, November will be moving the storage unit, November will be easier because half the stuff is already in boxes. Iowa and Northwestern are both away, Iowa seems to have us figured out at Kinnick the last time we won there half our players weren't born. Northwestern until 3-4 years ago seemed to have our number too. Indiana and Purdue are both home and cakewalky type games.
So while our boys looked like a top 10 team on Saturday even given their competition I saw nothing that changed my prediction of 9-3. If we had beat them 2 million to -8, I'd still be thinking 9-3. But to me, that would be a very excellent record.
Five years ago, the realistic position of the program was:
- Make a bowl once every three or four years.
- Beat one of your rivals(ND, UM, PSU) every year or two.
- Recruit all two-star guys with 4-6 higher rated recruits.
Now, the realistic position of the program is:
- Make a bowl every year
- Beat one or two of your rivals every year. Last year we beat all three.
- Recruit all three-star guys or higher with 2-4 two star recruits. *
That is an enormous change from five years ago. Honestly, think to yourself, in your heart what is the chance this team does not make a bowl game? For me, there are no numbers that low. My seven year old self would say minus infinity. Is that XFinity? Take that Comcast, ZING! Do you think that we would lose to Michigan, Notre Dame and Ohio State this year? I think we should at a minimum beat one of them. For the recruiting, well we have no two star dudes, and only 4 spots left. So, we can already check that one off.
*- Just like every other institution, Rivals has participated in grade inflation in the past 10 years. So this is not as strong an accomplishment as it seems, but it's certainly an improvement.
Worst case scenario, instead of being the overacheiving team that runs into a buzzsaw named Matt Ryan, Matt Stafford or the Alabama HGH Hormone Machines, we can be the underachievers who had issues and knock the snot out of the lower tier bowl opponent they play. Wouldn't winning a bowl game be as big an accomplishment as anything else this year.
So friends of the MSU football program, your expectations should not be to repeat 2010, but they certainly should be higher than they were in 2006. I still think 9-3(5-3) in the Big Ten would be progress toward the larger goal, which is building a team that consistently competes for Big Ten titles. We got lucky last year, but we are on our way to being good rather than lucky. Some days it's better to be lucky than good, most days I'd rather be good than lucky. That's where we're headed and this year will be a chance to see how far we've come.
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