Kirk Herbstreit and the rest of the ESPN College GameDay crew are visiting East Lansing, Michigan this weekend as No. 6 Michigan (7-0) will take on No. 8 Michigan State (7-0).
The winner of that game will be in a prime position to win challenge Ohio State for the Big Ten East Division crown. Presumably, it also puts the winner in a great position to qualify for the College Football Playoff.
Some people might have expected Jim Harbaugh and Michigan to be here but not as many expected Mel Tucker and Michigan State to be in this position. And Herbstreit heaped praise on the Spartans, calling them the “biggest surprise in the country.”
“I think Michigan State has been the biggest surprise in the country, not just in the Big Ten,” he said. “To think about where they were in Mel Tucker’s first year. Keep in mind, like a lot of other first-year coaches in 2020 – it’s a global pandemic, heavy restrictions, no spring football, cancel the season, oh no, now we’re going to have a season, and it’s just unprecedented what he went through his first year. They looked like, obviously, a severe work in progress.”
Herbstreit also says that if there’s any school that has taken advantage of the transfer portal, it’s Michigan State.
“They’ve upgraded and taken advantage of the 2021 way of doing business, and now they’ve got a confident football team,” he said.
Will the Spartans’ way of doing things in 2021 be enough to defeat their in-state rivals from Ann Arbor? We’ll find out on Saturday at Noon.
[ESPN]
