MSU making U-M uneasy
in changing football rivalry
Spartans have Wolverines' attention,
but perception lags behind reality
By Graham Couch, Lansing State Journal, 11/1/13
Michigan vs. Michigan State hype video: They respect each other. They hate each other. Players and coaches from Michigan and Michigan State talk about Saturday's rivalry game between the two state schools. Dave Wasinger | LSJ.com
U-M head coach Brady Hoke and MSU's Mark Dantonio and their teams will meet again Saturday at Spartan Stadium. MSU has won four of the last five meetings between the schools. / MIKE CARTER/USA TODAY Sports
EAST LANSING — Michigan’s football program, for the first time in my cognizant lifetime, feels threatened by Michigan State.
Not yet to the point of panic. But the Spartans have U-M’s attention.
The rhetoric coming from Ann Arbor this week was a reminder of a changing rivalry. The unmistakable and collective exhale reverberating through Michigan Stadium last year was a clearer sign.
The Wolverines and their fans experienced a new emotion — in victory, no less — one they’ve likely never before felt at the end of a game against MSU ...
Relief.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Michigan senior offensive lineman Michael Schofield said this week. “Especially because of the (losing) streak.”
This, moments after Schofield and teammate Taylor Lewan admitted being bullied by MSU a year earlier.
I can’t imagine Bo Schembechler or Desmond Howard or Steve Hutchinson — all of whom suffered defeats to the Spartans — ever knowing these sensations.
There are still traces of MSU’s deep-rooted inferiority complex and the enduring smugness of U-M — beyond just athletics — that have so defined this one-sided rivalry for most of the last century. Among the two football fan bases, these feelings are ingrained in the soul.
Perception takes much longer to turn than reality. What we believe early sticks with us, becomes part of us, limits what we allow ourselves to know and realize. To an MSU fan, the sight of those maize and blue winged helmets bring with them an emotional response that isn’t dimmed by a few years of winning.
So, the perception of this rivalry, as it stands and is becoming, is up to you and your ability to be open to the present.
Michigan State will never be Michigan. This contrast of land grant vs. flagship state university feeds a hierarchy that exists similarly with Alabama and Auburn, Kansas and Kansas State, etc.
But MSU is a stronger institution than it was a half-century ago and its resources athletically make it a player — based on finances alone, one of the top two-dozen in all of college sports.
Michigan is at another level, especially in terms of football economics and lore. There, it’s in a class with Ohio State, Notre Dame, Alabama, Texas, USC, Florida and Oklahoma and maybe a couple of others.
And, inconveniently for MSU, it’s right next door and an everyday competitor, in many aspects. For MSU, having U-M nearby, is limiting.
“I’ve never really thought about it like that because it sort of is what it is,” MSU football coach Mark Dantonio said. “I just worry about what I can control, and we try to do the very best we can in terms of the things we can control. And based on my count right now, we’re up.”
“Up” measured in the only place MSU can win right now, where it can push back against a century having a thumb on its chest — the scoreboard.
MSU has won four of five against Michigan on the football field, is favored again this Saturday and, next year, gets the Wolverines back at Spartan Stadium. It is reasonable to think the Spartans will get to six wins in seven years.
At what point then does perception shift?
In basketball, it took only a few years. MSU rose to new heights, just as Michigan collapsed in scandal. And both parties maintained their new statuses for more than a decade.
“It’s funny,” MSU basketball coach Tom Izzo said. “If we lose a game or two (in basketball), it seems like everything’s changed, everything is turned around (back toward Michigan). Yet we win four out of five in football and I don’t know if it’s that same way.”
The differences are both past and present. Michigan’s dominance was more pronounced in football — 30-8 in favor of U-M in the years before the last five meetings. And, frankly, this is a football-first state and the Wolverines, for the last 40 years, have been the only regularly nationally relevant team in it, college or pro.
The gap between MSU and Michigan was as real as it was perceived.
“I think if you ask the Michigan players that have played us the last four, five, six years, they wouldn’t even know what gap you’re talking about,” MSU linebacker Max Bullough said this week.
They wouldn’t, because it no longer exists. And this is what Michigan has always feared — sustained physically competitive talent from its in-state rival, led by a coach who loves to poke the bear.
U-M is a national brand, its biggest rival another national brand, Ohio State.
MSU has brought the fight back in-house. And, if you can’t emerge from your own state, where does that put you on the national landscape?
I’ve long felt Michigan derives more joy from beating the Buckeyes. But losing to the Spartans stings more.
This is a pivotal time in the rivalry. MSU smells it. U-M is noticeably uneasy.
But perception won’t catch all the way up with reality for years, so, the Spartans, this new reality must sustain itself — post-Bullough and after
What’s happened over the last few years has made this rivalry interesting, its given a voice to the voiceless Spartan fan. It’s forced the Wolverines to realize past dominance has an expiration date.
But this is still the makings of one terrific coaching hire by MSU and one mistake by Michigan.
And for Michigan, it’ll always be easier to get it back than it will be for MSU. That goes for hoops, too.
“I think for it truly to be a rivalry, it cannot be one-sided,” Dantonio said this week. “(Otherwise) it’s just words. If you can’t back up the words, it’s just empty words.”
This one is no longer empty words.
The Wolverines hate that. Because, for so long, their words about respecting MSU were also empty.
Not yet to the point of panic. But the Spartans have U-M’s attention.
The rhetoric coming from Ann Arbor this week was a reminder of a changing rivalry. The unmistakable and collective exhale reverberating through Michigan Stadium last year was a clearer sign.
The Wolverines and their fans experienced a new emotion — in victory, no less — one they’ve likely never before felt at the end of a game against MSU ...
Relief.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Michigan senior offensive lineman Michael Schofield said this week. “Especially because of the (losing) streak.”
This, moments after Schofield and teammate Taylor Lewan admitted being bullied by MSU a year earlier.
I can’t imagine Bo Schembechler or Desmond Howard or Steve Hutchinson — all of whom suffered defeats to the Spartans — ever knowing these sensations.
There are still traces of MSU’s deep-rooted inferiority complex and the enduring smugness of U-M — beyond just athletics — that have so defined this one-sided rivalry for most of the last century. Among the two football fan bases, these feelings are ingrained in the soul.
Perception takes much longer to turn than reality. What we believe early sticks with us, becomes part of us, limits what we allow ourselves to know and realize. To an MSU fan, the sight of those maize and blue winged helmets bring with them an emotional response that isn’t dimmed by a few years of winning.
So, the perception of this rivalry, as it stands and is becoming, is up to you and your ability to be open to the present.
Michigan State will never be Michigan. This contrast of land grant vs. flagship state university feeds a hierarchy that exists similarly with Alabama and Auburn, Kansas and Kansas State, etc.
But MSU is a stronger institution than it was a half-century ago and its resources athletically make it a player — based on finances alone, one of the top two-dozen in all of college sports.
Michigan is at another level, especially in terms of football economics and lore. There, it’s in a class with Ohio State, Notre Dame, Alabama, Texas, USC, Florida and Oklahoma and maybe a couple of others.
And, inconveniently for MSU, it’s right next door and an everyday competitor, in many aspects. For MSU, having U-M nearby, is limiting.
“I’ve never really thought about it like that because it sort of is what it is,” MSU football coach Mark Dantonio said. “I just worry about what I can control, and we try to do the very best we can in terms of the things we can control. And based on my count right now, we’re up.”
“Up” measured in the only place MSU can win right now, where it can push back against a century having a thumb on its chest — the scoreboard.
MSU has won four of five against Michigan on the football field, is favored again this Saturday and, next year, gets the Wolverines back at Spartan Stadium. It is reasonable to think the Spartans will get to six wins in seven years.
At what point then does perception shift?
In basketball, it took only a few years. MSU rose to new heights, just as Michigan collapsed in scandal. And both parties maintained their new statuses for more than a decade.
“It’s funny,” MSU basketball coach Tom Izzo said. “If we lose a game or two (in basketball), it seems like everything’s changed, everything is turned around (back toward Michigan). Yet we win four out of five in football and I don’t know if it’s that same way.”
The differences are both past and present. Michigan’s dominance was more pronounced in football — 30-8 in favor of U-M in the years before the last five meetings. And, frankly, this is a football-first state and the Wolverines, for the last 40 years, have been the only regularly nationally relevant team in it, college or pro.
The gap between MSU and Michigan was as real as it was perceived.
“I think if you ask the Michigan players that have played us the last four, five, six years, they wouldn’t even know what gap you’re talking about,” MSU linebacker Max Bullough said this week.
They wouldn’t, because it no longer exists. And this is what Michigan has always feared — sustained physically competitive talent from its in-state rival, led by a coach who loves to poke the bear.
U-M is a national brand, its biggest rival another national brand, Ohio State.
MSU has brought the fight back in-house. And, if you can’t emerge from your own state, where does that put you on the national landscape?
I’ve long felt Michigan derives more joy from beating the Buckeyes. But losing to the Spartans stings more.
This is a pivotal time in the rivalry. MSU smells it. U-M is noticeably uneasy.
But perception won’t catch all the way up with reality for years, so, the Spartans, this new reality must sustain itself — post-Bullough and after
What’s happened over the last few years has made this rivalry interesting, its given a voice to the voiceless Spartan fan. It’s forced the Wolverines to realize past dominance has an expiration date.
But this is still the makings of one terrific coaching hire by MSU and one mistake by Michigan.
And for Michigan, it’ll always be easier to get it back than it will be for MSU. That goes for hoops, too.
“I think for it truly to be a rivalry, it cannot be one-sided,” Dantonio said this week. “(Otherwise) it’s just words. If you can’t back up the words, it’s just empty words.”
This one is no longer empty words.
The Wolverines hate that. Because, for so long, their words about respecting MSU were also empty.
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