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There are always those moments when you’re a kid on a trip with your parents to see family, and your folks decide to take a drive through the town where one or both of them grew up.
They carry on for about 15 minutes about how everything has changed, point out all the vacant buildings or chain store joints that used to be charming Mom and Pop places, and reminisce about how “back in the day” there weren’t so many gosh damned McDonald’s or Burger Kings.
You come to scratching your head about it all until you get older and you find yourself doing the same stinking thing. It’s the cycle of life, and ageism, I suppose.
At any rate, there’s comfort in that old place, with fewer stores, where you can name the silly moments from your youth and discuss who lived where and who has passed away, since you’ve shoved off and moved on as people tend to do.
For Michigan and Michigan State, probably earlier than you’d imagine, they’re back home again. They’re driving through Rivalry Town with a little mist in the eyes, patting junior on the knee saying, “It’s good to be back here again, even after so much has changed.”
The time away has been better to the Spartans than the Wolverines.
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Since Michigan grew tired of Lloyd Carr and his consistent but not grand enough winning, the Spartans have lost once in seven meetings, a record for the rivalry. That loss was a 12-10 defeat with a Wolverine field goal at the horn after three hours of what was essentially the football version of two stone drunks bashing each others’ heads in as best they could in an alley.
Prior to this current run, Michigan had won 6 straight and 7 of 8.
Now that Jim Harbaugh is around at UM, respect and expectations are higher at any individual point in the season than I can recall since the 2006 year, when Michigan went unbeaten all the way to the Ohio State game.
The Wolverines opened up as something close to touchdown-point favorites (depending on where you looked) for this weekend’s clash, which promises to be a symphony of hitting. That’s a staggering reversal considering the Spartans were a top-five team to close last season and Michigan couldn’t scuttle past five wins.
History suggests that this is a crossroads game for both programs. In a piece on CBS by Jon Solomon, it shows that for all the years these two have been playing college football, they’ve both finished in the top 25 a total of only 13 times.
While this year figures to be 14, consistently shared high-level success has eluded both programs in their history together. Contrast that to basketball, where both programs have shown an acute ability to be in the national picture at the same time.
The rub is that this might be logistics as much as anything. There are only so many recruits in Michigan that are FBS-level talents, and no matter how wide-ranging your recruiting base is, you fill the roster with in-state players. The Midwest, as a region, isn’t like the South, Central Plains, or West, all of which have anchor states (Florida, Texas, and California, respectively) where talent oozes out enough to satiate both the in-state programs and still leave room for invasion from others.
Ohio is probably the Midwestern state closest to that identity, and prying kids away from You Know Who is a difficult task in its own right.
For that reason, expect a lot to be made of the final result, especially if Michigan wins. MSU, on the other hand, has been savage against the Wolverines, not just winning games of late, but taking Michigan’s soul in the process. During the recent streak, the Spartans have beaten the Wolverines bloody: to be specific, by an average of over 16 points per game.
The Wolverines haven’t scored a touchdown against the Spartans in a remotely competitive part of a game since 2011, and have had only one of any kind in that span. Yes, 2011.
Can a change in coaching staff really make up for that much? Yes, it can, especially when there’s talent on the roster for that coaching staff to work with.
Michigan looks like Michigan State, whilst the Spartans have played the role of winning, but doing it in a not overly convincing fashion. Yes, there are injuries, but needing late game heroics to beat the likes of Purdue and Rutgers shouldn’t be necessary for a team as good as we’re accustomed to seeing in East Lansing.
Whoever wins this one will most certainly feel as though it has taken some sort of proverbial flag and stuck it back in the ground in the recruiting wars, especially in the state of Michigan, where new staffs must quickly make connections with high schools the other rival school has invaded.
For MSU to win in Ann Arbor, it’ll mostly need to keep doing what it has done the past several seasons. The problem is that these Wolverines tend to hit back, registering three shutouts in a row and looking generally ornery on a weekly basis.
Now, the Wolverines are cleaning up the turnover issues that plagued them like a guy with halitosis who consistently forgets to brush his teeth since … well … since Carr left.
The dislike — either fabricated, enhanced, or real from the beginning — has always been there on MSU’s side. It’s an odd rivalry of sorts, one that has all the hallmarks of true nastiness and delusion, but with one bullet in the chamber and no option of telling MSU it can stand behind Ohio State so the bullet goes through both. The ire and dislike from Michigan will always and forever be aimed at OSU more than the Spartans.
Mike Hart was the Michigan player who made the infamous “little brother” comment about the Spartans many years ago, and they still bring it up on an annual basis as Hart collects paychecks and wards off gray hair (probably, because we all do) at Western Michigan as a running backs coach.
A line in the sand will be drawn based on the outcome of this game. Either MSU still “owns the state,” or UM comes back for the class reunion and decides to move its multi-million-dollar business back in town and run for mayor, with the first order of business making sure there is no scarlet, gray, or green on any building facades or in plain sight from any other angle.
The above two narratives are exaggerations of something that’s only partly true.
The challenge for both will be to sustain success as the other attempts to peak at the same time. There will always be those that like the task of bullying the successful rich kid. There will always be those who want to be the successful rich kid.
These are weak and exaggerated metaphors, but they’re ones that exist in extremes in this rivalry. The truth is, both are excellent schools with excellent athletic departments and fan bases. That said, everyone likes a story you don’t have to work too hard to imagine.
So latch down the back in the station wagon, grab some beef jerky and Jolt, and let’s go through Dad’s old hometown, where everything’s changed over the years but feels so comfortable after only five minutes back. The only question here is whether or not your folks are paying a visit, or looking for real estate.
So what happens? I have my own opinion (Michigan, 20-9), but plant said flag however you choose.
