Oregon-Michigan State laden with meaning
September, 1, 2014
Sep 1, 10:00
By Ted Miller | ESPN.com
AP PhotoThe performances of Marcus Mariota, left, and Connor Cook will go a long way in determining the outcome of Saturday's Oregon-Michigan State game. As a consolation prize, however, the college football gods have given us No. 8 Michigan State visiting No. 3 Oregon on Saturday. It's a Rose Bowl matchup the first weekend of September, with the (alleged) Big Ten best versus (alleged) Pac-12 best. With Ohio State quarterback Braxton Miller out for the season and UCLA's less than scintillating performance at Virginia, this one has gained further traction as a potential CFP selection committee barometer for both teams and both conferences.
No, there will be no sunset behind the San Gabriel Mountains at Autzen Stadium, but there likely will be rosy fingers of meaning extending from whatever happens Saturday. For one, an early-season victory over a top-10 team in a nonconference game is exactly what the selection committee claims it will pay homage to. As an optional challenge boldly undertaken outside of the rote bureaucracy of conference scheduling, this game should serve as a badge of honor for teams trying to distinguish themselves to 13 judges in a conference room Dec. 7.
Ah, the committee. We can be fairly certain that, for better or worse, the great "Transitive Property of College Football" will play a role in its deliberations, and that is the perception prize the Spartans and Ducks will battle over in addition to the scoreboard numbers.
If Oregon wins, it will thereby -- transitively -- be better than any team the Spartans beat over the remainder of their season. If Michigan State ends up the Big Ten champion at 12-1, the Ducks will be viewed as the de facto Big Ten champs -- at least if the Ducks do well enough over the rest of their season to merit such an overreaching (overreacting?) designation. This playoff math would be rendered less relevant if Oregon, in this scenario, meanders to a 10-2 finish and fails to win the Pac-12's North Division.
The same goes for Michigan State, perhaps even more so because the rest of its schedule is not as demanding. If the Spartans beat a Ducks team -- in fearsome Autzen Stadium, the Pac-12's toughest road venue, no less -- that goes on to win the ostensibly SEC-ish Pac-12, their bounty could be a defensible claim to the top perch in two Power 5 conferences. That is, of course, if they take care of business over the entire season.
So the function is almost a transference of the Rose Bowl's typical season-ending meaning, just without any of the cool pageantry. A further twist is that both teams after the game become each other's biggest fans, with both winner and loser wanting the other to make the result a more impressive measure of itself.
Not that you'll hear Ducks coach Mark Helfrich or Spartans leader Mark Dantonio celebrating this sort of curlicue thinking. They've got teams with big goals, including playoff goals, but placing this game on such a pedestal could make a loss feel catastrophic within the locker room. Then what about the next 10 or 11 games?
“[This is] game No. 2. We have 10 games after that. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves," Dantonio said. "It’s not an end-all either way. That’s going to be a measuring stick game for us. Where are we at? Who are we? It will give us a little more of a sense of identity early in the season.”
Once you get past going John le Carré on potential selection committee intrigues, the football part of this football game is pretty cool, too. Although the teams share a team color of green, that's pretty much where the commonality ends, and even then, Oregon long ago went ludicrous speed on the notion of team colors and sartorial standards.
Speaking of ludicrous speed, Oregon, you might have heard, plays fast and furious on offense and piles up yards and points like a frenzying school of pirañas.
Meanwhile, Michigan State, as you know, plays defense like a thick wall of titanium. Wall? It's more like an impregnable box -- with walls slowly closing together.
Last year, Oregon ranked No. 2 in the nation in total offense (565 yards per game) and No. 4 in scoring offense (45.5 ppg). Michigan State ranked No. 2 in total defense (252.2 ypg) and No. 3 in scoring defense (13.2 ppg). The Spartans also enter the game knowing they beat the Pac-12 team that beat the Ducks, given that they dispatched Stanford 24-20 in the 2014 Rose Bowl.
Of course, an over-reliance on what happened the past season is one of the greatest weaknesses in so-called college football punditry. The first weekend has already shown us that projecting forward based on returning starters and extrapolated improvement is an inexact science. Both Oregon and Michigan State are missing key players from 2013 on both sides of the ball. They also have shiny new players ready to glow.
Still, the circumstantial evidence suggests both teams will lean on their obvious strengths on Saturday. The Ducks and quarterback Marcus Mariota, a leading Heisman Trophy candidate, rolled up 673 yards without really trying in an opening win over South Dakota, while Michigan State's defense throttled Jacksonville State 45-7 yielding just 244 yards.
The obvious only goes so far. The game ultimately might swing on the secondary quantities. Spartans quarterback Connor Cook has been surging since the middle of the past year, and he was darn near perfect in the opener and actually earned a perfect rating of 100 in ESPN.com's Total QB Rating. Oregon's defense has long been given short shrift, despite ranking among the nation's leaders and sending numerous players to the NFL.
The sum conclusion is that, while we will go Rose Bowl-less this season, this is a game that has plenty to offer, both in football on Saturday and in potential micro-analyzed meaning as the season progresses.
EAST LANSING – No. 8 Michigan State at No. 3 Oregon is big enough to put in blockbuster movie terms, so think of it this way: Oregon is Superman, MSU is the superhero's least favorite substance and the Big Ten is Princess Leia in "Star Wars" saying: "Michigan State, you're our only hope."
Or at least that's how some are viewing the situation for the Big Ten as way-premature College Football Playoff projections dominate discussion of the sport. Wisconsin had a chance to help the league's reputation Saturday against LSU, but the Badgers blew a 24-7 second-half lead and lost 28-24.
No. 5 Ohio State, of course, is playing without quarterback Braxton Miller (shoulder) this season and got a scare from Navy in its opener. So the first weekend could have been better – not to say every national analyst thinks the Big Ten is doomed.
"People keep looking at the Big Ten and wondering, 'Where's the power?' For some reason, people had anointed Ohio State prior to the Braxton Miller injury," said Fox analyst Charles Davis. "And it's almost like people have forgotten that Michigan State won the conference last year and returns a whole lot of great players — beat Ohio State head to head. They're going on the road, carrying the banner for the Big Ten."
The Spartans and Ducks, both 1-0 after opening with blowouts of FCS teams, will meet at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Oregon's Autzen Stadium, in a game televised nationally by Fox and featured nationally with ESPN's "GameDay" crew in town. MSU is at the epicenter of college football for a week, and the specific matchup of MSU's defense against Oregon's defense may be as appealing to football wonks as anything the 2014 season can offer.
"I can't wait," Oregon quarterback and Heisman front-runner Marcus Mariota told the Free Press in a phone interview after practice Monday. "They're very disciplined, they're very well-coached and we know they're really good at what they do.
"They press their corners the majority of the time and you don't see teams do that a lot with both corners, so you know they're special players."
MSU plays physical, blitz-heavy defense and physical, run-heavy offense. That brings to mind Stanford, which lost 24-20 to MSU in last season's Rose Bowl and has slowed Oregon's offense and beaten the Ducks the past two years – 26-20 in 2013 and 17-14 in 2012 – though Mariota was slowed by a knee injury in last season's meeting.
"Their nemesis, their kryptonite in recent years has been Stanford," Davis said of Oregon, bringing Superman into the discussion. "What's Stanford's style of play? Heavy-duty running the ball on offense, being extremely physical, excellent tackling team on defense, which makes you run more plays. All those yards after catch, yards after contact, open-field plays that Oregon's used to getting, that hidden yardage, they weren't getting against Stanford.
"So for Oregon to win the Pac-12, they have to beat Stanford. They know that, they have to get past that hump. For Oregon to clearly get into that playoff consideration and have the chance to be an undefeated team, they have to beat Stanford twice this year. And what I mean by that is, Michigan State is Stanford."
Oregon has a chance to prove it can handle that style. MSU has a chance to prove it can lose senior stars all over its defense and still come back with an elite team – from a quality conference.
"People now are really gonna clue into us and go, 'All right, what have they got for this year? What kind of identity do they have?'" MSU linebacker Riley Bullough said. "And I think we're ready to show what we have, and we're ready to really put out for the Big Ten. We're excited for that opportunity."
SATURDAY'S GAME
Michigan State at Oregon
• When: 6:30 p/.m.
• TV: Fox/Spartan Sports Network, including WJIM 1240-AM and WMMQ 94.9-FM
• Inside: McDowell gets first-game jitters out of the way. Page 2C
Or at least that's how some are viewing the situation for the Big Ten as way-premature College Football Playoff projections dominate discussion of the sport. Wisconsin had a chance to help the league's reputation Saturday against LSU, but the Badgers blew a 24-7 second-half lead and lost 28-24.
No. 5 Ohio State, of course, is playing without quarterback Braxton Miller (shoulder) this season and got a scare from Navy in its opener. So the first weekend could have been better – not to say every national analyst thinks the Big Ten is doomed.
"People keep looking at the Big Ten and wondering, 'Where's the power?' For some reason, people had anointed Ohio State prior to the Braxton Miller injury," said Fox analyst Charles Davis. "And it's almost like people have forgotten that Michigan State won the conference last year and returns a whole lot of great players — beat Ohio State head to head. They're going on the road, carrying the banner for the Big Ten."
The Spartans and Ducks, both 1-0 after opening with blowouts of FCS teams, will meet at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Oregon's Autzen Stadium, in a game televised nationally by Fox and featured nationally with ESPN's "GameDay" crew in town. MSU is at the epicenter of college football for a week, and the specific matchup of MSU's defense against Oregon's defense may be as appealing to football wonks as anything the 2014 season can offer.
"I can't wait," Oregon quarterback and Heisman front-runner Marcus Mariota told the Free Press in a phone interview after practice Monday. "They're very disciplined, they're very well-coached and we know they're really good at what they do.
"They press their corners the majority of the time and you don't see teams do that a lot with both corners, so you know they're special players."
MSU plays physical, blitz-heavy defense and physical, run-heavy offense. That brings to mind Stanford, which lost 24-20 to MSU in last season's Rose Bowl and has slowed Oregon's offense and beaten the Ducks the past two years – 26-20 in 2013 and 17-14 in 2012 – though Mariota was slowed by a knee injury in last season's meeting.
"Their nemesis, their kryptonite in recent years has been Stanford," Davis said of Oregon, bringing Superman into the discussion. "What's Stanford's style of play? Heavy-duty running the ball on offense, being extremely physical, excellent tackling team on defense, which makes you run more plays. All those yards after catch, yards after contact, open-field plays that Oregon's used to getting, that hidden yardage, they weren't getting against Stanford.
"So for Oregon to win the Pac-12, they have to beat Stanford. They know that, they have to get past that hump. For Oregon to clearly get into that playoff consideration and have the chance to be an undefeated team, they have to beat Stanford twice this year. And what I mean by that is, Michigan State is Stanford."
Oregon has a chance to prove it can handle that style. MSU has a chance to prove it can lose senior stars all over its defense and still come back with an elite team – from a quality conference.
"People now are really gonna clue into us and go, 'All right, what have they got for this year? What kind of identity do they have?'" MSU linebacker Riley Bullough said. "And I think we're ready to show what we have, and we're ready to really put out for the Big Ten. We're excited for that opportunity."
SATURDAY'S GAME
Michigan State at Oregon
• When: 6:30 p/.m.
• TV: Fox/Spartan Sports Network, including WJIM 1240-AM and WMMQ 94.9-FM
• Inside: McDowell gets first-game jitters out of the way. Page 2C
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