By far, and perhaps generous.

Do they make the fan base’s heads twirl with disrespect?

At EF5 tornado speed.

Rankings are crack to the football starved and hopelessly addicted fan bases who twitch at the mere whisper of a late October matchup with a preseason top 10 school in the middle of August. It’s asinine for Spartan fans to join in such delirious doping on a drug they’ve just now become a regular part of.

But looking further into the rankings, though ultimately impractical as it is, MSU is at its best when not considered the favorite to win much of anything.

In 2011, Big Ten Network writer Brent Yarina wrote Nebraska would win the Legends Division and reach the Big Ten Championship game. The Spartans went 7-1 in Big Ten play and fell an unfavorable call short of winning a Big Ten title.

Take the 2013 season, too. Picked by Athlon Sports to finish fourth in the Big Ten Legends Division with an overall record of 7-5, MSU unloaded its best defense in years enroute to a 13-1 record-breaking season, capped by the school’s first Rose Bowl trip and win in 26 years.

Then most recently, this past season MSU was picked by Athlon Sports to finish second — behind Ohio State University — in the Big Ten East Division, with two losses in conference play, but was expected to have a shot at winning the Big Ten. MSU went on to capture the Big Ten, of course, and earn a spot in the College Football Playoff, though it stumbled along under the guise of added pressure from national attention.

But even the end result after each successful season never seems to be enough for Spartans fans. With each hit of the hype drug, the fan base wants to up the ante, asking for embrace from the mainstream media and the rest of the country. And while Dantonio and the Spartans have provided unequivocal joy over the last decade, fans ought to check exactly how often they go to the supply.

National prominence was last associated with MSU football in the 1950s and 1960s, and it has been a slow climb to recognition since. It’s important to note even with past success, MSU is the new kid on the block, and when the new kid starts interrupting business for the established big kids he won’t garner the same respect.

But to also think MSU ought to be propped up with an unproven quarterback, new offensive and defensive lines and an unproven young receiving corps is a farce.

It also begs the question of why MSU fans want to be in the glow at all. The glam of the spotlight is at odds with the blue collar tone of Dantonio’s football program, which has allowed it to focus on winning and building a program on the backs of undervalued players with something to prove. It also carries nearly everything Spartan fans loathe.

Most of the established fan bases are seeped in arrogance, marred by grumblings of controversy and dripping with blind devotion to an ideal it only represented once in its legacy.

MSU will be better served when kept out of the mouths of the pandering experts on the mainstream sports TV networks. The program has survived on the backs of its own community, and it’s the community the fan base is better off embracing, rather than the faux admiration from the rest of the country. 

MSU is flying under the radar again, and the fan base should embrace it once it finally sobers up from its drunken, recognition-chasing stupor. MSU will be good again this year. Now that it takes second stage — a familiar spot — it could once again vault itself into the College Football Playoff.