Michigan State will defeat Alabama in football in the second CFB Playoff game on Dec. 31, 2015. That’s it. That’s the opening line. No jokes, entertaining lead-ins, or crazy statistics that you accept at face value because it’d be too tough to research it and make it up.
The Spartans are underdogs, mostly because the Spartans are always underdogs. In their minds, they’re probably underdogs when they’re actually not. MSU does the “chip on the shoulder” thing better than any program in college football. Usually, wins numb the “no respect” card. In East Lansing, it only helps the chip get larger, like it’s always eating actual chips … like Ruffles, bags of them per meal.
Statistically, both of these teams are pretty similar. Both are going to strangle your run game more likely than not. Alabama has the best rushing defense in the nation. MSU is also in the top 10. The Crimson Tide also have a top-10 pass defense, whereas MSU is more in the middle of the pack.
Both teams are only “okay” on special teams as a whole; think Lienenkugel’s beer options but in football form. MSU is morbidly bad in the punt return game on both offense and defense.
There is one truism in sports, and that’s that the further you get along to professional, the more “scheme” matters, but when you get to the professional level, the percentage of importance in scheme versus the Jimmys and Joes finally tilts in favor of scheme.
Certainly in middle school and then high school, the Jimmys and Joes rule, no matter how much Coach X wants to pretend he’s Gene Hackman in “Hoosiers.” In college, it starts to even out a little more, but if you have one guy that’s just better than everyone else at an important position by a significant amount, you’re likely going to win.
Which is what brings us to this game.
Here’s what’s going to happen: Derrick Henry will get his 100 yards, but they won’t come in the form of a flogging so bad in the second half, you wonder if the authorities need to be called in to maintain order. If there’s only one characteristic about MSU that you can take, you’re going to want the Spartans’ toughness.
Alabama will need to win with Jacob Coker, and he’ll make some good throws, especially deep. As long as he can use his legs, Bama will get theirs.
Michigan State, on the other hand, will get a virtuoso performance from senior Connor Cook, who is finally healthy after a shoulder injury forced him to miss the Ohio State game and has kept him less than 100 percent. The country will be introduced to Aaron Burbridge, who, with a school-record 80 catches this season, tied the cumulation of his catches his first three seasons in East Lansing.
Michigan State will win because the Jimmy at the most important position in college football for the Spartans is better than Alabama’s Joe. Or in this case, Jacob. Both teams are mostly even. While MSU does have a shakier pass defense, it also played a more difficult schedule than Alabama, and in their three biggest games (Iowa in the Big Ten title game, at Ohio State, and at Michigan), the Spartans gave up 216, 46, and 168 yards respectively.
Against Oregon, they nearly ended the Ducks’ record for consecutive games throwing at least one touchdown pass, until a late Vernon Adams scoring throw as the Ducks were trying to rally.
The point is that you can massage statistics any way you want to. MSU does its best when the lights are hottest, and those lights will be scalding come Thursday night.
There are a lot of reasons you’ll hear for why Alabama is going to win. You’ll hear plenty more about that than anything the Spartans are “going to do.” What MSU is going to do is win and shock everyone that doesn’t don their green and white, because in spite of the spade of wins they’ve been racking up over the last few years, the Spartans are still the angry underdog.
All of that seems to be fine with them. At some point, the schtick will run out because they win too much. Until then, and because of Cook and an attitude that refuses to allow them to read their own press clippings, they’ll get by Alabama and drag the underdog anvil into a game against either Clemson or Oklahoma.
Don’t buy it? The Spartans would prefer you didn’t.
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