Michigan State Fans These Days Don’t Know What They’re In For

I was in jail.

Michigan State University police station, actually, waiting for a transfer to Ingham County Jail. I had let a fix-it ticket for my Honda’s busted exhaust turn into an actual ticket while saving up for a new exhaust, and then the old exhaust fell off completely while driving downtown which drew the attention of the local constabulary and it turns out I had a warrant from the unpaid ticket and . . . yeah.

This was in the Hazy Period of my life. I was as done as I was going to get with college but hadn’t yet bothered to spin the numbered wheel of The Game of LIFE or add people-pegs to my little plastic car. I was taking stock of that decision, or lack thereof, when a fresh-faced lad sporting a blue cardigan and khakis was seated next to me.

I asked him what he was in for. “Rioting,” he said.

I asked him what in the hell he’d been rioting for.

“I . . . I don’t know,” he said. “I’m from Connecticut. I thought  . . . that’s just what we do here.”

* * *

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about the student sections at Michigan State. The Izzone is bigger than ever, packing the lower (and part of the upper) bowl, but instead of making the Breslin an impenetrable fortress of intimidation the Izzone picks their spots. They make noise, sure, but they save themselves for big games and big situations.

The southeast corner of Spartan Stadium doesn’t fill up anymore, despite MSU not losing at home since October 2009. Think about that: this fall’s class of Michigan State juniors have never witnessed Michigan State lose at football, yet AD Mark Hollis is openly considering shrinking the student section.

The students are passing up no opportunity to add salty words to their chants, because ha ha why not? FIRST DOWN, BITCH! That’s clever and funny! As Jim mentioned earlier, they also have no problem wheeling out the “Little Sister” chant to against Michigan, because apparently being a girl is worse than being a boy. Besides, we can’t be each other’s little siblings. If students are going to be sexist idiots, they should at least make sense and call Michigan “Big Sister.”

What’s wrong with kids these days?

Part of it, as Hollis said, is cultural. His twelve-year-old doesn’t ever “sit down for two hours and do anything.” But if college kids can’t pay attention to their football or basketball team establishing itself at the top end of national awesomeness, then we might as well give up on humanity now because nobody will ever pay attention to anything ever again.

Part of it is a trend across all sports: going to a game used to be the ultimate populist spectacle. Entering Spartan Stadium meant joining a seething mass of humanity, the lower bowl a cauldron filled by the bloodthirsty hoi polloi. Now, sporting events are more like joining a fancy club with steep dues. The kind of people who go to games are the kind of people who can afford to drop hundreds, or thousands, on tickets and concessions and apparel—and frankly, those people are less likely to stand up and holler from kickoff to gun.

Those are also the kind of people who can afford to send their kid to Michigan State. Tuition keeps going up, and every year the percentage of (highly profitable) out-of-state and international students grows. More and more kids from Connecticut are showing up expecting nonstop multi-sport Spartan domination . . . and nobody screams their lungs out with joy when they get what they expect.

I don’t mean to suggest that students who aren’t from Michigan can’t be Real Spartans. In my experience, how green your blood is depends entirely on how green your heart is—what Michigan State means to you personally.

But of my Spartan friends, many are legacies; their parents moved from wherever to the Lansing area and stayed here. Coming to Michigan State meant establishing themselves as independent adults—and the potential to reach a standard of living much higher than they were raised in. In turn, they taught us to be Spartans and hate Michigan and all that good stuff. When my eldest child started school, I found to my delight kids still display partisanship by chanting, “Michigan, State! Michigan, State!” and jabbing a thumb down (or up), then up (or down) in time with the words, just as I did when I was a kid.

For me, the success of Michigan State athletics, and the rivalry between the two schools, was expressed constantly around me in the home and at school and at church . . . it absorbed the entire community. Nick Saban’s last season here, the amazing 9-2 Citrus Bowl year, seemed as close to glory as Michigan State was ever going to get. Crowds packed Spartan Stadium to the brim, and the team started calling their home “The Woodshed” because they almost never lost there.

Now they actually never lose there.

When I see current MSU students from parts unknown on Twitter with “Proud future Chicagoan” in their bio, it makes me wonder. Coming from money elsewhere, heading for money elsewhere, stopping here to party in between . . .  how much can Spartan triumph possibly mean? Who cares about taking pride or being classy when they can just show up drunk and have fun and leave halfway through to go drink? Or, hey better yet, just leave the paid-for ticket in their pocket and keep playing another few hours of flip cup?

For this generation of Spartan students, going to a top bowl game or beating Michigan or going to a Final Four isn’t a jumping-up-and-down screaming, fandom-defining moment, it’s just what we do here.

* * *

The final part of it rests squarely on the shoulders of the power brokers in college sports. Mark Hollis, Jim Delany, and the NCAA as a whole, I’m looking at you. How can students think football games are special when they don’t mean anything? How can you expect thousands of college kids to show up and scream their brains out as Michigan State puts it in cruise control against FAU or Chicago State for the umpteenth time?

When I rant and rave about “diluting the product,” this is what I mean. College athletics has stretched itself to the breaking point. Universities and conferences are desperately trying to board the TV money train while their arm is shackled to the boring old concrete pylon that is a century of amateur college athletic tradition. That money train is pulling away, and either they need to let it roll away, or break out of their college handcuffs once and for all.

Michigan State Basketball and the Burden of Expectations

This year in MSU Basketball has been strange. This was the first year that I can remember in a while where MSU was not ranked stupid high in preseason polls. Draymond Green was a drill sargent in a uniform, rallying the kids with the lunch pail work ethic and every other stupid cliche you can think of. Keith Appling was the budding star and after that it was a laundry list of unknown quantities (Gauna, Byrd), underperformers(Payne, Nix, Thornton), fresh faces(Dawson, Trice, Kearney) and a one year rental in Brandon Wood.

In the pre-season there was serious talk about whether or not MSU would even make the tournament. Whispers questioning if this is the year that Izzo's streak in the Big Dance comes to an end. North Carolina didn't just represent a season opener, it was like getting run into a buzzsaw of college basketball's elite as the christening for most of these newcomers. MSU ended up losing to North Carolina by a respectable 12 points and was right there in a 74-69 loss to Duke.

Then the TRULY unexpected happened. MSU rattled off 15 straight victories. For perspective's sake, 15 straight victories has happened three times in the Izzo era. The other two? In the three straight years of final four appearances.

When I went to run the 15-4 number against years prior, I expected to find that this was a fairly exemplary record for MSU at this point in the season. However, this is VERY common under Izzo, the last team not to have a 15-4 record that wasn't the 2010-2011 failboat was the 2003-2004 Spartans.

So why celebrate such an average start for Michigan State? Well, for starters 15-4 is pretty damn good. Second, of this whole team, the only two players who saw more than 12 minutes per game last year were Appling and Green. Appling is growing into his point guard role nicely and shhh... he's only a sophmore, yet distributes the ball better than Lucas. This tracks him nicely on belonging to a very elite group of point guards by the time he leaves MSU.

When a group of young players expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten have winning streaks in common with teams of the Izzo Golden Era, that's promising. When MSU Basketball knocks off Wisconsin at the Kohl's Center, I get excited. When MSU basketball has lost to three top 20 teams by an average of six points and beaten two other top 20 teams, they're tracking to do what Tom does best. Make deep runs in the tournament.

Last week, the chatter of MSU winning the whole Big Ten began in earnest on the message boards and people started to expect Golden Era Izzoball from this team. That, among other reasons is why losing to Michigan hurt tonight. No one likes to lose to a rival. More importantly, I think MSU fans are not ready to acknowledge Michigan basketball as a real threat again yet. But Beilein is a good coach and seemingly a decent person, he's gonna be around for a while. However, in the one to two year future, this is MSU stubbing it's toe against a quality opponent on the road in the Big Ten.

This is a year MSU was expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten pack and they may yet do exactly that, but I don't think so. This team has accomplished several significant somethings that many other Izzo teams never did. The best part, most of these guys are just getting to know each other and it's okay to place more expectation on this team than many did to start the season. They have broad shoulders and they can take it. They're going to stub their toe a few more times this year. But the potential is so much greater than I think most of us imagined prior to this year, just wait, Tom and his boys will deliver, after all it's what an Izzo team does.

Mob Justice Is Served; It's Time to Let Them Be

Note: i finished this article around 12:30 last night, but decided not to post because PSU fans were rioting at the time. Since, Dan Wetzel has penned an eerily similar column at yahoo. Peep it here, after you finish this of course.

Last Friday November 4th here were some of the storylines for PSU football.

Scout.com Player to Watch: Devon Still

A QB Controversy

The season-long narrative was filled with the typical Joe Paterno talk of retirement, how much is he actually coaching the team, etc. Then late Friday, the Altoona Mirror amongst other media outlets broke the Jerry Sandusky Story. Last night, Joe Paterno after sixty-one years and five tumultous days Joe Paterno was fired.

The things that always hurt the most in life are the ones you don't see coming. When people die in accidents, friends lose a baby they were getting ready to meet, the truly unexpected. Joe Paterno was a man who won in an exemplary fashion at Penn State, donated millions to both Penn State and the Special Olympics and coached over 1500 men at Penn State. He has done good works for the people of his community and the community of College Football. No one would have expected that ole Joe could have turned a blind-eye to what Sandusky was up to.

Yet, it's become increasingly apparent that's what's happened here. The Grand Jury Report indicates Paterno was notified explicitly of the situation and reported it to his superiors. Legally, he appears to have covered his ass, but in the court of public opinion that doesn't mean squat. He didn't follow-up, he didn't do anything and Jerry Sandusky was working out on campus as recently as last week. Joe didn't do enough and neither did any of the other key decision makers at Penn State and for that they had to go. As they should.

Tonight the mob got it's justice and the key decision makers at Penn State have been removed except maybe Curley, but he'll get fired too. There will be other firings as time goes by and more details come out, more victims will come forward. The magnitude of awful attached to this story might not grow more, it might grow a lot more, we don't know.

A college buddy of mine was attending Virginia Tech when those shootings happened a few years ago. I had e-mailed to see if he was ok and luckily he was, but he had acquaintances who were killed that day. Within two days, he wrote that the only thing that would let that community heal is for them to be left alone. This is true at Penn State as well.

The mob justice has been served. It's time for the national focus to leave Penn State be so they can start focusing on the people who really matter in this: the victims. There are a number of children who will need lots of care and love in the next few months as their very intensely private matters become very public. As people living 500 miles away there's not much we can do for those victims, but perhaps we can all become a bit more vigilant in our neighborhoods.

It's time for us non Penn Staters to leave so the community can start putting itself back together and trusting each other again. When your Big Ten brethren see you on the field again, we'll be ready for a tough game of football. Hell, we might even commit some unsportsmanlike conduct penalties so you don't feel left out. Take your time, we'll be here for you.

Kirk Cousins: The Last of a Dying Breed

The Michigan State/Wisconsin game will be a game I remember for a very, very long time. The game featured two typical Big Ten Quarterbacks both with semi-accurate arms, the ability to run a little bit and could play Wide Receiver if so desired. So I'm sure you could see why it's a little strange that the typical Big 10 Quarterback on our roster was the one who caught Saturday night's Hail Mary pass, not the one who threw it.

A bloodless revolution has taken place at the Quarterback position in the Big Ten over the past several years. In 2006, zero quarterbacks rushed for over 450 yards. In 2011, two (Denard Robinson and Taylor Martinez) have already eclipsed that total. MarQueis Gray, Kain Colter(if he plays even one more game), Nathan Scheelhaase and Braxton Miller are on pace to meet that 450 yard mark. Russell Wilson is on pace to come up just short Gray and Scheelhaase could pass it this weekend. Miller and Colter should just squeak over it.

There in dead-assed last sits our hero. Mr. Kirk Cousins. With 16 rushes for -70 yards he's not a runner. That's almost exclusively sack yardage. It's not that he can't run, it's that he chooses not to. I might add the dude who took the terrible angle plays for the Chargers now.



So Why Am I So Happy That Our Throwback QB Is Coming Back To The Future?

A couple reasons. First, the Big Ten is the most boring conference in college football. The national opinion of Big Ten Football is that it is slow, anachronistic and boring. This is the same reason Michigan hired RichRod, they wanted to be the first to the block with the new brand of football. That and Rodriguez was the first dude to say yes. I am 100 percent ok with the rest of the country thinking we're a conference full of Robot Henne Quarterbacks who can't run at all.

Second, this over the years will provide a distinct recruiting and development advantage. Brian Hoyer who did not get drafted at all in pro football has been Tom Brady's backup for the past three seasons. Kirk Cousins is anywhere between third and seventh on most analysts Draft Board despite the fact passing wise he's the fourth best QB in the Big Ten. If you want to play in the NFL at QB how fast you are doesn't really matter at all, it's how well you throw the ball. Being a pro-style quarterback prepares you for playing in the pros.

Kirk Cousins is the last of a dying breed for a few reasons. The bulk of which have nothing to do with and are far more important than this article. He is a human being that is what's good in people. The one that interested me today though is that he is the last of a dying breed of dropback passer in the Big Ten. In spite of that all, I'm not sure I'd want anyone else.

ESPN College GameDay: Built by Home Depot, Conquered by Michigan State Spartans

You are going to be on ESPN.

You’re reading this; you know where you’re going. Early Saturday morning, you’ll swathe yourself in Green and White and drive to campus. You’ll wait until 6:00 am, when they’ll let you park in the Trowbridge ramp for $15. You’ll proceed to Munn Field, which will be opened for you (and thousands of your closest friends) at 7:00. Two hours later, the football-watching world will see you piped into their home—and the strength of our numbers.

Last time ESPN College Gameday came to Michigan State, it was 2005. The Spartans were a miserable 5-5. GameDay was not there to witness a clash of titans; they were there to crown Penn State.

This season, ESPN is putting Michigan State on the biggest possible stage. We’re playing for extraordinarily high stakes. We’ll host the Wisconsin Badgers, the usurpers of our rightful 2010 Rose Bowl berth. As you know, MSU is 5-1 and the Badgers are 6-0; both teams are undefeated in-conference. A win would put either school in the driver’s seat to win their B1G division.

Last week, Jim wrote eloquently about the Little Brother mentality. It’s clear that the team has overcome this complex, but have the fans? Saturday will be the true test.

Everyone even casually associated with Michigan State understands the importance of the Michigan rivalry; campus was saturated with fans last week. But do we really play a one-game season, in fans’ minds? Has the team already accomplished everything fans hungered for?

Us Michigan State fans have always held the great teams of Biggie Munn and Duffy Daugherty dear. We’ve been raised to believe our rightful place in the NCAA hierarchy is at or near the top; we should perennially compete for Rose Bowl berths and occasionally be amongst the best in the land.

The reality’s been different.

The other day, my family went to our dentist. In his hallway, he’s hung a matted and framed aerial photo of the 1988 Rose Bowl. My son eagerly asked questions about it; while answering I heard myself say I was his big sister’s age—seven years old—the last time MSU played in Pasadena.

Last season was very nearly Michigan State’s triumphant return to the top of the Big Ten food chain; this game and the next could right 2010’s wrong. It’s no secret the Marks Dantonio and Hollis aim to elevate Michigan State football back to its lofty historical perch. Part of that means not being satisfied with a winning record, a bowl berth, and beating Michigan. Part of being a perennial conference contender and occasional national contender is understanding the stakes for which our Spartans play.

This game, against this opponent, with each team’s respective records, and a national prime time audience, should be importance enough. Spending all day and all night tailgating before showing up in droves would normally be fine. But Spartan fans have an incredible opportunity to show that not only our team is ready for the national stage, but our school, program, and fans are too.

Really, this is all wasted effort on my part. I don’t know why I’m writing to you. I don’t know why I’m preaching to the choir. You’ll be there. You’ll be wearing your colors and screaming in and out of commercial breaks and you’ll cheer your brains out when the 200th piece of mascot headgear Lee Corso ever dons is a Sparty head.

Don’t worry, I didn’t mean to harangue you, proud and loyal Spartan.

I’m talking to everyone else.

The Expectations Heaped Upon Izzo By Rankings

Basketball isn't totally my thing. I love watching our team and I've always said that if Izzo shot someone at midcourt during a basketball game he wouldn't get in trouble until he did it the second time. Some of my fondest MSU memories are of attending MSU hoops games. I knew I was on the right track with my wife when she started talking about playing inside/outside ball and preaching why Izzo should play zone instead of man.

However, as I started out saying, I'm happy to watch basketball passively instead of critically and it's for that reason I'm starting out with the disclaimer right now. If you want cogent or frequent basketball analysis this isn't going to be the place for it. If that's what you want and you're not already reading The Only Colors you should be. They do work. That said, on with the show.

Here comes the rain, the cold, the yuck. Where football season and tailgating starts to get a bit raw, where you come home from every game and changing back into just a shirt after wearing seven clothes makes you feel like you lost 20 lbs in seconds. As I sit and write, it's pouring cats and dogs outside and there's 25 mph winds. This is normally the time of year I pick up a Sports Illustrated and see MSU B-ball is ranked in the top 5.

This year though, Izzo enters the season ranked 28th in the Coaches Poll which isn't even really ranked. He suffered the loss of Delvon Roe several weeks ago, Korie Lucious & Garrick Sherman last season, Chris Allen the offseason before that. We graduated Kalin Lucas, Durrell Summers and Mike Kebler. We've lost six players since last year that contributed significant minutes to our 2010 MSU basketball team.

This might be the best thing to revitalize MSU basketball in a long time. What's Izzo ranked today? He isn't. He opens against #1 UNC and follows that up that by playing #6 Duke. So even if he opens 0-2 then he's still not ranked, he mulligans and he starts over. Can't lose there, you're playing with house money. He's going to be rotating in freshmen this year and lots of them. He has young players in Payne, Appling and Nix who have experience playing, but are far from savvy veterans.

He basically gets to blow up the team and start over with young, inexperienced and most importantly talented players that are malleable. A coaches dream for winning championships in the future. Who's gonna help old Tom whip this whippersnappers into shape? Draymond Green.

I've called Draymond Green in the past the Drew Stanton of Michigan State Basketball. He can do it all and sometimes does things a person would never think to do usually good, occasionally bad. He is tough, he works hard, he's a good kid and he can flat out ball. He manages to be a shining star of the team while still putting the team first. He's exactly what you want to teach all of the young pups to be and this is his team.

This is the first year in quite sometime Izzo has been freed of top 10 expectations by writers who forget that Izzo is brilliant in March and is still learning his guys in November. Izzo is free to experiment, to build, to have more teaching moments than usual. This is a year where if MSU basketball finishes in the top 3 of the Big 10 it's a joy, not an expectation. With reasonable expectations, this could be a great year for MSU basketball.

Poll Question: Beat Michigan or Play in the B1G Game

Would you rather?


A Couple Qualifications

1.) Playing in the B1G title game doesn't mean winning the B1G title game.
2.) I know that beating Michigan is probably requisite to getting to the B1G title game, but that's not the purpose of this exercise.
3.) Results will be used in a future post.

Friday Morning Youtubin'!

I could only find one highlight reel for Friday Morning Youtubin'!. I'll let you guess which one it is.



This is why we absolutely cannot sleep on these guys. I'll grant you that in 2009 this was the best team in Michigan. I'll give you that LeFevour was the MAC version of Tim Tebow and that Radcliff his replacement is slumping right now. But as Mike from said, this is their Super Bowl! For us, this is a game to get healthy and get our crap together before OSU. If we sleep on CMU though, this is what happens.

Next!: The Notre Dame Fighting Irish

In this world there are three things I love more than all other things. My family, the Philly at Backyard BBQ and the sad panda look of the fans of our vanquished rivals. I don't always feel that way about Notre Dame fans. Despite how hard I was on Notre Dame's program with the Uncle Rico comparisons I've always found their fans to be a likable sort of people. If you really wanted to go all JK Rowling on the whole thing, Notre Dame is like Hufflepuff, certainly a rival, but at the end of the day not the enemy of all things sacred and good. When Voldemort is comin' to town you can count on them to get your back.



I'm not sayin', oh screw it, I am sayin'

So that's what makes it particularly hard to watch the latest in the string of Saviors of Notre Dame football. The fans of Notre Dame deserve better than Brian Kelly or at least the Brian Kelly I've seen on TV the past two weeks. In just a year they've gone from Brian Kelly lobbying for only 8 minutes of commercial breaks between snaps to Brian Kelly being incapable of sending in a play call with enough time for the QB to do anything other than run the play as given. Dayne Crist and Tommy Rees, Notre Dame Quarterbacks both have not gotten stupider since last year. I have to assume they've stayed the same at reading defenses if not gotten better. So what gives?

Here's a list of what Brian Kelly is not:
- The President of Senegal.
- The Savior of Notre Dame football
- An oompa-loompa
- Unstoppable

Previewing a team like Notre Dame scares the crap out of me, and by scares the crap out of me I mean is difficult to do. There will be a minimum of two games in progress under the view of touchdown Jesus, Notre Dame vs. Michigan State, Notre Dame vs Notre Dame and perhaps even Rees vs Kelly. Kelly won Saturday night's match up of Rees vs. Kelly at the sacrifice of winning the match up of Notre Dame vs. Michigan.

That was the most excitingly terrible game I have ever seen. Neither team could give that game away to the other. A commenter on Twitter said: I know when Michigan plays Notre Dame, you wish both teams could lose. Both teams tried and failed. How do you make a prediction on a team that has yet to play a game where they don't spend more time beating themselves than trying to beat you? Well, who even knows if we'll be close to right, but let's give it the old college try.

Notre Dame Pass Defense against Michigan State Passing Attack

Notre Dame's defense gave up 338 yards to Denard Robinson on Saturday but he only completed 11 passes. Additionally, Michigan never had an offensive drive that went more than five plays. This suggests that Notre Dame might be susceptible to the big play. Further, Cousins is more accurate than any quarterback they've played so far this year and in this regard you can only consider the Irish Pass Defense untested. The Irish held BJ Daniels to 128 yards passing, but it rained like God was starting the great flood in South Bend and USF was just trying to salt away the lead on the ground after that. Plus BJ Daniels is like Denard Robinson lite.

Cousins has been his usual efficient self completing 79 percent of his passes for 3 touchdowns and no picks. He's looked comfortable and in command of the offense as you'd expect. BJ Cunningham is going to be the best wide receiver in South Bend on Saturday, yep, I said that. We should have Bennie Fowler back and always watch out for Keshawn.

Advantage: MSU
Key Matchup: Kirk Cousins vs the missing communication armbands of the ND Secondary.

Notre Dame Rushing Defense vs Michigan State Rushing

In case you haven't heard our running backs are good. Real good. Like "killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die" good. I bring them up because Notre Dame will have to gameplan around our rushing attack good. In an interview with Dan Roushar, our offensive coordinator, he indicated that MSU has kept things pretty vanilla in the run game so far. I don't know if that means as much to the run game as it does to the passing game, but more wrinkles available is always a good thing.

I suspect we'll continue our rotation of Baker and Bell with Caper on 3rd down. Hill could make an appearance as the game goes on. There's something magical about having a 5'6" guy running through a line of people a foot taller than him. You can't find him sometimes.

Notre Dame is tooling itself up to stop the run by playing with lots of beef on it's defense. If they have success early on, look for State to start using the pass to set up the run. They surrendered 126 rushing yards to USF in the aforementioned rain bowl but only like 10 yards to rushers not named Denard Robinson in the Michigan game. That's probably part Notre Dame's Defense and part that Michigan was playing from behind the whole game.

Advantage: MSU(but not by as much as before)
Key Matchup: The MSU Monster Trio vs Notre Dame beefcakey manchildren linebackers.

Notre Dame Passing Attack vs MSU Pass Defense

Tommy Rees stepped in to relieve Dayne Crist halfway through the USF game and is suffering the same sort of turnover problems that Crist did. He's got a pretty respectable 69.9 percent completion percentage for 611 yards and 5 touchdowns on the season. He unfortunately has 4 interceptions and 1 lost fumble to his credit at this point. I'd pick on him for half his passing yards being to Michael Floyd, but the same is true of Cousins to Cunningham. Speaking of Michael Floyd, he is definitely among the top two receivers in the stadium on Saturday. Michigan State will need to keep a bead on him at all times.Notre Dame has been effective at moving the ball all season and not being able to close in the redzone. If those problems aren't cured on Saturday, look out.

Michigan State on the other hand has yet to face a quarterback as good as Tommy Rees. Further, they've shown in the Youngstown State game if you want to try and complete passes for four yards, we'll give that to you all day long. Still I like the cut of the jib of our defensive line and think that Worthy will show up to wreak havoc on the ND interior line Saturday. Dennard and Adams will have to do some of their best work to keep tabs on Michael Floyd. They will need help from Lewis and Robinson over the top on deep routes.

If Notre Dame can avoid beating itself:
Advantage: Wash
Key Matchup: Notre Dame not beating itself.

If Notre Dame has Notre Dame fail:
Advantage: MSU
Key Matchup: MSU Defensive Line forcing poor decisions that result in Turnover Walks of Shame.

Notre Dame Rushing Attack vs MSU Rush Defense

I think the combination of Wood and Gray is not as solid a rushing attack as Allen and Wood was last year. The tandem of backs has combined for an average of 160 rushing yards a game against two of the worst defenses they will play this year. In short, I'd say Notre Dame's rushing game is the quality of a middle tier Big 10 opponent, they'll have some success running, but I'd say it'll be capped at 100 yards give or take 25 yards.

Of course there is to consider the Spartans looked devastating in their lopsided victory of FAU by ceding only 22 rushing yards. While it may have only been FAU, they looked like a machine into which you feed men and out comes only bones. Still, this will be higher quality competition than MSU has faced thus far.

Advantage: Wash
Key Matchup: MSU's young linebackers forcing Wood and Gray into the ground.

Special Teams

Notre Dame's Kicker is 1/2 on the Season, Conroy is 2/4 on the Season.
Notre Dame's Punter has an average of about 36, Sadler is averaging 37.8 on the Season.
Advantage: Wash
Key Matchup: Getting one team to stop copying the other team's average special teams play.

Intangibles





Coaching

Right now, Mark Dantonio has his sea legs at MSU, Brian Kelly does not.

Final Prediction

It's not that Notre Dame CAN'T win this game, it's that I think they have too far to come in too short a time. I'd rather be playing them now than in six weeks from now. I think ND's pass defense has not shown me that they can stop Cousins nor that their defense is well-suited to stop our rushing attack. They make too many mistakes at critical times on offense for me to be real scared about offense. Although, expect this to be a game where if you watch it with someone who gets pissy about a team moving the ball between the 20s, that you will be hearing a lot of complaints. Final score in the 5 Key Things Post tomorrow.

Slow and Steady Wins The Race

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.

Yes, But Who Watches The Watchmen?

When I started watching football in 1996, I was of the thread that all you needed to be successful in any game was a quarterback. Give me a quarterback that is high and mighty, noble in his reads and I shall deliver you a championship. While this is very occasionally true, more often than not a QB requires some assistance. Apologies to any Northwestern QB reading this, you are sewn of the skin of Satan and never got any help at all. As my knowledge of football changed, I don't want to say progressed, that would imply I know more than I did in 1996 that grew to include WRs, RBs and eventually OL.

Here's why your Left Tackle is one of the most important dudes on the field. Here's why:
As previously discussed in the Assume The Position: Quarterbacks series if that happens to Kirk Cousins, that will spell DOOM for this season.

The Right Tackle position is less important regarding the health of your quarterback, but it is imperative for running the football. Running right is what the big ten does best, isn't it? A good right tackle is like a fullback on steroids. Note: It is not actually a fullback on steroids. A good Right Tackle can John Henry their way down the field felling punier creatures of 230 while swigging a can of red bull.

So finally I come to the point, in the most successful run of MSU football since I started watching, how in the hell are we starting a two-star Redshirt Senior with two starts prior to this year and a Redshirt Freshman at Left and Right Tackle respectively? Did Mark Dantonio forget to recruit guys at this critical position?



Forgot? He didn't forget. Mark Dantonio gets angry about forgetfulness.

Let's take a look at what happened with our OT recruits in the 2007 - 2011 classes.

2007

Jared McGaha - The only OT recruit of the class. Currently starting for the Spartans although we'll see about next week. In pretty much any other situation he'd be a depth chart guy, though due to the thinness of the position right now he's starting. It's hard to get after a guy being asked to play above his ceiling, to say nothing of the fact that he played RG until last year.

2008

John Deyo - A two star kid with offers from CMU, EMU and MSU. He seemed like a kid with boom or bust potential. Obviously things have worked out less than ideally in terms of his development. He has seen the field in a special teams role and occasionally in mop-up duty.

Zach Heuter - A referral from the outgoing UM staff under Carr. Would have been wasted under Rich Rod. A pure Right Tackle if there ever was one. He took a medical DQ earlier this year after spending like 3.5 hours healthy during his three seasons at MSU.

Anthony Woods - NFL body, Special Ed mind. Left MSU after his freshman year due to a combination of grades and disciplinary stuff. Apparently he disappeared into the ether since even the googles cannot determine where or why he left.

2009

David Barrent - Flipped his commitment from Iowa to MSU and seems to be the only logical piece in a mysteriously deep-seated hatred of MSU by Iowa football fans. David Barrent took a medical DQ this spring after dealing with a back thing since he got here. This one hurt. David Barrent was supposed to be our NFL Left Tackle playing where Dan France is this season.

Henry Conway - Rumors have been persistent since Conway came to campus that Adonis chiseled a statue of Henry Conway in his living room. Then he done fractured a vertabrae a couple years back. He saw mop-up time on Friday, but I really doubt he's a starter this year.

2010

Skyler Burkland - Current starter. I'd guess four year starter at RT. He looked the part on Friday, but the part for a Redshirt Freshman is still some fairly frequent mistakes. Look for massive improvement from him this season and beyond.

Michael Dennis - Dennis is/was and may always be a project kid. At 6'7 and 260 he'll either put on the 40-50 lbs needed to be a dominant LT or he won't. If he's gonna see the field much, it'd be next year or the year following.

2011

Fou Fonoti - Was a JC transfer and expected to compete for the starting LT spot. He looked a bit undersized still on Friday night. He's another guy who might enter the conversation as the season progresses, but I wouldn't expect much out of him soon.

So of the 9 offensive tackle recruits of the Dantonio era six were recruited from 2007-2009. One is a starter, three are no longer with the program(two medical DQs), one has a spine that has been cracked open and one despite all that appears to have no shot at seeing the field.

The guys recruited in 2010 and 2011 are Burkland, Dennis and Fonoti. Fonoti could see significant time this year, as I said before Burkland I think will be a four year starter.

Bonus Observation!

The football gods have not been great to the non-OT positions either. From 2007, Arthur Ray struggled with the aftermath of his cancer, Chase Dumphord arrived on campus and was homesick in about 2 days. From the 2008 class Ethan Ruhland has had a difficult time cracking into the two-deeps(he hasn't been able to find a home either, bouncing between center and left guard). Nate Klatt a four star center has been passed by both Blake Treadwell and Travis Jackson. Look at his 2012 future to be at guard. Micajah Reynolds has been bounces between the OL and DL like Carmen Sandiego eludes me yet again.

Bonus Observation Part 2!

Dan France was recruited as a DT but Rivals had indicated his biggest upside might be at OT. This was prior to his arrival at MSU and not something they posted last week. Unfortunately, I don't think this is the situation you wanted that to come to fruition.

Conclusion: MSU's Position Group God of Destruction without question belongs to the OTs specifically for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009. McGaha is in part the starter because he's pretty much the only intact survivor of those three years. Help is on the way with Burkland, France and Fonoti but I don't think it will arrive in time to make a significant positive impact for the 2011 season. The good news is that the recruits of the 2010 class look to be wins across the board and France if he pans out has two more seasons after this one. Even if OT is a train wreck in 2011, it SHOULD improve going forward.

Unless Shiva gets angry again.

Miami: South Beach

If you haven't heard by now Miami is in a lot of trouble for being a naughty program. Convicted Ponzi Schemer Nevin Shapiro has decided to come forward admitting to many millions of dollars of improper benefits he provided for players from 2002-2010. "Lil' Luke" as he was known in team circles was guilty of three things, 1.) Having a nickname that made him sound like the member of the Sopranos that gets kicked in the nuts all the time and then his scene "magically" gets cut from the show. 2.) Funding many acts that are both illegal in terms of NCAA Bylaw and that are ACTUALLY illegal. 3.) Being that guy, who goes on a "shooting rampage" and then "turns the gun on himself". If you're going to be a jerkass and mess up your favorite team, speaking as a fan, keep it to yourself instead of securing yourself a book deal and ruining everyone else's good time.

I've wondered for years why kids continue to take their talents to South Beach. Urban Dictionary defines "I'll be taking my talents to South Beach" as:

1. To inform someone that the current situation is no longer working.

2. F*** off.

3. You're not doing it for me anymore, or what you offer is lacking.

What the other schools were offering was indeed lacking and this helps explain why from 2006-2010 Miami was averaging a 14th place recruiting class while finishing with a crap record. A question in my mind though, is that there are schools that finished in front of them in recruiting with far more middling success on the field. What are those schools doing? But I digress.

This article sums up how I have felt about Football and Men's Basketball for a couple years now. It is brilliant. Do you believe in earning money for doing good work? Do you think it's fair that with my favorite Greg Jones jersey the only person in the entire world who cannot make money on that jersey is Greg Jones? Yeah me either. If any article can change your mind on a scholarship being adequate compensation for football players generating 100 million dollars in revenue for their school, it's this one.

The kids at Miami committed a series of very serious violations. Death penalty to Miami football serious violations. After reading what I have in this article and several others, after spending many hours debating that a scholarship is not adequate recompense while the school makes millions of dollars on the backs of these kids. The only thing I feel firmly planted in saying on the subject is that many of these violations are ridiculous and that most things in life, you can watch the show and enjoy or you can peel back the facade, see the dirty underside and learn to love it anyway. That's what I've done with college football.

The Predictive Preseason Pecking Order

I'm taking a break from Assume the Position today, if I don't get some work done, I'll be assuming the position later on this week with my boss.

I've always thought that preseason rankings are crap. This appears to be a widely held belief among many people who believe in science, logic and all other things represented by sanity and not magic. I find this year's preseason ranking of our Spartans about as exciting as all of the mosquitoes that have returned to mid-Michigan in the past couple of weeks. On a side note, it's occasionally difficult not to cackle with glee when the light is making mosquito popcorn outside.

The Spartans are exiting the preseason ranked 17th according to the USA Today poll. In the last nine years the 17th ranked team in the USA Today Poll has finished 9-4, 9-4, 11-3, 12-1, 11-3, 9-3, 8-4, 10-3(Oh Minnesota, you had Glen Mason and he made magic out of manure for you) and 10-3. The Preseason 17th ranked team has finished ranked two of the nine years, once 6th and once 21st. If you take the W-L records of those teams that would average out to 10-3 for us this if we finished ranked 17th. The W-L records of those who were preseason 17 are as follows: 6-7, 12-1(ranked), 11-2(ranked), 6-7, 6-7 , 5-6, 5-6, 8-5, and 7-6. Applied to this year's schedule that averages out to: 8-5. So what does all this mean? Precisely Diddley.



Therein lies the problem. If we finished 17th that mentally correlates to being the best 9-4 team in college football(bowl win), an average 10-3 team(maybe a bowl win or good loss) or the worst 11-2 team(bowl game spanking) in college football. I personally don't like being the worst 11-2 team in College Football, I'd rather be the 10-3 or 9-4 team, it's more representative of who you are.* Yet, recent past history points to what we should expect this year is a team that goes 8-5 with a lot of boom or bust potential for 6-7 or 11-2.

- Note: That line of thinking is waived if we make or win the Rose Bowl or the National Title game.I'm good with being the worst undefeated team in College Football going into the National Title game.

This ultimately is my reason for not appreciating the magic behind preseason rankings. They're not reliable and in the case of the 17th rank in the USA today poll since 2002, they're more predictive that your team will not finish ranked than that they will. I'd be thrilled with a 10-3 season as the final 17th ranking would predict for these Spartans. I'd be pretty unimpressed with an 8-5 finish particularly if that did not include a bowl win. Yet, that's what the ranking over the last nine years truly predicts for a 13 game season.

So Spartan fans, expect 8-5 and love you some 10-3 or better when it comes. Tell your Michigan rooting neighbor that being ranked 17th for us or anyone else is crap and if they press the point ask them how being ranked helped them lose to us 34-17 last year when they "outranked" us. And should things come unglued and some moron on Big Ten Network is discussing how our season exploded if we're 5-5 playing Indiana on November 19th, know that our average is still within reach OR if we drop the last two and finish 5-7 we're not the first, or the last to suffer the Preseason Ranking affliction. Finally, if we P4RB the way we know how we have good company in our friends from TCU and BYU who have taken their 17th Preseason Ranking and achieved anyway!Think Lebowski In short or long, the preseason rankings, mean nothing and are nothing. If you're going to enjoy any magic, enjoy the magic of a college football game.