Enough of the talk of whether or not MSU is an “elite” football program.

In case you’re late to the party, I’ve got some old news for you — Yes, they are.

Now can we please just end this discussion once and for all and get to MSU’s playoff game with Alabama on New Year’s Eve?

No? Okay, well let’s dive into this discussion one more time.

And we’ll start with one man — Mark Dantonio.

Since Dantonio came to MSU following the 2006 season, he’s led the Spartans to an 87-32 record, three Big Ten Championships, a Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl victory and now an appearance in the College Football Playoff.

The past six years alone have seen MSU go 65-15, a span which has included five seasons of 11-plus victories for the green and white -- something that had never been done before once in school history.

The heights Dantonio has brought MSU to were unimaginable 10 years ago.

As long as it has taken for some people to realize, yes, Michigan State University is a national power in football.

Sure, it’s happened slowly, but there’s never been any let up along the way. (i.e. Chase it, It starts here, Reach higher).

And no amount of chips on MSU’s shoulder, misspellings of Dantonio’s name or so called “disrespect” to the MSU football program can change that.

Perhaps former MSU quarterback and current Washington Redskins signal caller Kirk Cousins put it best in his article in The Players’ Tribune on Tuesday.

Cousins was a freshman at MSU for Dantonio’s first season back in 2007. Cousins played a huge role in aiding the MSU football program to what it’s become today, and had a first row seat in watching Dantonio guide them through those first five years.

“When Coach Dantonio and I arrived in ‘07, all we knew was a program that was competing for .500 records,” Cousins said in his column. “When Shilique (Calhoun) and Connor (Cook) arrived in ‘11, all they knew was a program that was competing for Big Ten Championships. And a few months from now, when that ‘16 class arrives in East Lansing, all they’re going to know is a program that competes for national championships.”

For those that still don’t believe it, though, just ask those recruits. Take four-star 2016 quarterback commit Messiah deWeaver for example, who’s part of Dantonio’s best class yet.

“I picked MSU, in the first place, I believed in Coach Dantonio and what he was doing with the program,” deWeaver said. “I’ve seen great things out of him so right now, what they are doing, it’s just icing on the cake. I was coming anyway because of those coaches. … but (Dantonio) has had this vision for a long time and I’m happy for him.”

For now, the next step for MSU is Alabama, inarguably the most dominant football program of this decade, and fittingly the head coach of the Crimson Tide is Nick Saban, who began his head coaching career at MSU in the mid 1990s.

Even more fitting for MSU, they currently stand as 10-point underdogs to the Crimson Tide.

But to the Spartans, better yet, to Dantonio’s Spartans, they’re just interested in playing the game.

“You are only an underdog if you think you are an underdog,” Dantonio said. “We have never played that card. We have always gone into things saying, ‘We got a chance to win a football game.’ I think that's still the case.”

Kickoff is at 8 p.m.

Tune in to see two elite football programs fight for a spot in the national championship game.