Windsor: U-M, MSU headed in opposite directions entering rivalry game
There’s more at stake than just bragging rights as these two intrastate rivals reconvene in East Lansing Saturday
It seems like old times, which is too bad for all of us. Just once — or at least more than once a decade — it’d be nice to get a football game between Michigan and Michigan State that means something to them both. And I’m not just talking about bragging rights.
But that’s not how these rivalries go, right?
One team rises, the other falls. Last year gave us a game for the ages, and though it’s silly to expect that sort of electric finish every season, it is fair to demand competitiveness.
Oh, we’ll get it from U-M, whose players had no trouble saying how much they’ve been looking forward to the rematch Saturday.
“Those last couple seconds are still boiling,” said running back De'Veon Smith, referring to the fumbled punt-snap and touchdown that crushed him and his fellow Wolverines.
“We had that bye week after, and during that whole bye week that was the only thing I could think about,” safety Dymonte Thomas said. “I just couldn’t wait to get revenge.”
Now he gets his chance. And, short of another miracle — meaning MSU playing actual football for the first time this season (Notre Dame doesn’t count) — he should get it.
After all, U-M will be ranked No. 2 when it arrives in East Lansing, and MSU will be … unranked. Though calling the Spartans unranked is a disservice to the unranked teams that have knocked them off. Maryland? BYU? Indiana? You get the idea.
Watching the Spartans unravel in the second half of most of these games has been disorienting. Coach Mark Dantonio doesn’t get the best talent from year to year, but his teams usually have been focused, prepared and tough.
This season, they’ve been none of those things.
MSU lost a number of exceptional players from its team last year. But it’s still shocking to see a program that had averaged 11 wins in five of the past six seasons look so overwhelmed by middling teams.
Against Maryland, the Spartans flat-out got bullied. With the exception of Wisconsin, whose freshman quarterback, Alex Hornibrook, completed several long, third-down throws, most of the teams that have beaten MSU have run the ball right up the middle.
Expect U-M to take advantage, too. The Wolverines will present the best offensive and defensive lines the Spartans have seen this season. This is why U-M is a 21-point favorite.
Add revenge to the mix and it could get ugly. Not that the available players after the Illinois game Saturday — or coach Jim Harbaugh — would admit they want it to get ugly. They all said the right things about Michigan State being another obstacle to larger goals and such.
This is true, of course. The Spartans are in the way. But you can bet Harbaugh and his team want more than just a victory. More even than revenge.
They want to announce to the region that college football equilibrium has been restored. They want to crush the Spartans in a way that would make them look small, as if they don’t belong on the same field. That’s how the Spartans treated U-M for a few years. They played with tremendous swagger.
Don’t think in-state and regional recruits who follow the teams didn’t notice. It’s true that former coaches Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke still got many of the recruits they wanted even as they absorbed punishing defeats by MSU.
But the style of those victories help Dantonio and his program project a certain aura to the best football players in our area. That aura has faded fast this season.
It might not be fair, and the tailspin might be only temporary, but after handling U-M seven out of the past eight games (last year’s squeaker notwithstanding), the tide of inevitability has turned. And that’s not good for Dantonio.
Nor is it good for us.
What gives us hope that this game still can become a toss-up mostly falls on the record of both coaches. Harbaugh might have the advantage in resources, but Dantonio has shown noteworthy resourcefulness building his program in a place so many of us thought it couldn’t be done.
It’s easy to forget that now. Just as it’s getting easier to forget how differently we thought of these teams a year ago. The meat of a college football season lasts only a few months. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime.