Congratulations, Michigan State. You did it.
For the 115 years since you started playing football, you’ve been obsessed with waging an imaginary battle against Michigan. Your original fight song included lines of “smash through that line of blue” and “Michigan is weakening.” Your name as the Spartans came as a direct response to Michigan being called the “Athens of the Midwest” (Athens and Sparta were rival city-states in ancient Greece. Wikipedia it. I hear that always works for class.).
And after beating Michigan a trio of times, during the worst three-year stretch in program history, you have your rare moment of attention. Hell, if you ignore Michigan’s edge in the all-time series, 67-31-5, you could even say Michigan State has turned the tide of the rivalry.
The Wolverine fanbase cares about you marginally more than Notre Dame! Time to party!
But seriously, here’s the bottom line: The three losses to the Spartans have derailed Michigan’s seasons. And no one in the class of 2012 wants to be in the fourth-ever senior class that never beat Michigan State. We care.
The funny thing is, no one else does.
I was at last year’s game. I saw Edwin Baker rush for 149 yards and two touchdowns. I saw the Spartans celebrating and heard your chants.
As I went home and flipped on the television I caught ESPN between games and expected the worst. They were airing College Football Live.
There was no talk of a dominant Spartan defense or Baker or Kirk Cousins. Everything centered on the play of a certain dreadlocked quarterback.
Despite being 11-1 and co-co-Big Ten Champions by the end of the year, those final BCS standings had you at No. 9, behind two-loss Arkansas and two-loss Oklahoma.
As your coach tried to drum up support for a bid to a BCS Bowl anyway, few outside of East Lansing came to his support. Why? Everybody knew the same thing.
Sometimes Sparty looks like a big boy, sometimes it even plays like a big boy. But don’t let Sparty get too far away from his diapers. Eventually, it’s going to crap its pants. When it happens later than usual, like last season, usually it happens twice. Iowa and Alabama know what I’m talking about.
Don’t be mad. You’re still Michigan’s second rival, a distant second from Ohio State — like the distance your defensive backs will be trailing Denard Robinson — but second nonetheless. You’re No. 2! After the previous paragraph, that’s especially fitting.
Plus, there are good things that come from the American public’s complete apathy toward you.
No one cares when your football players start a brawl in the dorm that causes your coach to create a “zero-tolerance” policy. Or when your starting cornerback, Chris L. Rucker, who was involved in said brawl, gets a drunk-driving charge.
Or when said cornerback is released from jail on a Thursday and your coach’s “zero-tolerance” policy means he can play two days later in the last major challenge to an undefeated season. Or that the team lost the game anyway.
Even on Saturday, no one is going to care that your “Pro-combat” threads look like South Florida and Colorado mixed their uniforms together and then threw up on them. People will keep their laughter to themselves when you chant “Go Green! Go White!” even though your uniform is missing one of the colors.
Embrace this. You need it. The public caring means you would actually have to live up to expectations.
People would look at your schedule and realize it is just as bad as Michigan’s and realize that the offensive line looks, well, like a bigger sieve than Drew Palmisano in the Big Chill. They’d be surprised when you crapped your pants.
It’s not worth all that. Keep your diapers on, Little Brother.
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Michael Florek is a Michigan Daily sports editor. He can be reached at florekmi@umich.edu.
