It’s simply not enough to compete with everybody — at some point, you have to beat them.

This is head coach Mark Dantonio’s first season, so the expectations will naturally be higher than they should. We need to keep in mind that winning isn’t instantaneous, but at the same time we expect a new coach is brought in because he is an improvement over the previous coach.

This team, though, is 1-5 in the Big Ten. It has won just once since its 4-0 start. So how has this team performed any better than John L. Smith’s Spartans?

Yes, they’ve hung in there. They’ve almost beaten Wisconsin, Ohio State, Northwestern, Iowa and Michigan. But almost isn’t good enough anymore.

If football is a game of mere inches, why can’t MSU climb those few extra inches to get over the hump and win? This team has undoubtedly made progress in how it plays throughout an entire game, but in the end this football team still has some terrible fear of closing out games — like every other Spartans football team.

Dantonio said last week that this team could realistically be 8-1 or, after the U-M game, maybe 9-1. So why didn’t that happen? We’re not even asking for 9-1 — why not 6-4, 7-3 or 8-2?

The team will take progress inch by inch, but its fans won’t wait long for the Spartans to crawl the mile they still need to go.

— Compiled by the sports desk