Drew Sharp: Simple winning isn’t enough for MSU

EAST LANSING, Mich. The game was won. But was the argument lost?

That’s the dilemma facing Michigan State as it branches forward toward a potential Game of the Century (circa 2015) in another two months in Columbus.

The Spartans got past Air Force on Saturday. They got the win. There wasn’t a definable blemish that could cost them in the college football playoff after Week 3. But there was a perceivable imperfection in their failure to cover the point spread in a 35-21 win that was close to two touchdowns shy of the Vegas anticipation.

Why does that matter?

Well ... if you’re a Michigan State fan and you don’t understand that perception, it only confirms how long you haven’t existed in a football world in which opinion matters as much as fact.

“This was a very good team,” said Michigan State linebacker Chris Frey afterward, making the sales pitch that this was a tougher nonconference foe than most suspected. “They play a disciplined style offensively with that option that’s difficult for a lot of teams. We knew that coming into this game and we had been preparing for them for a long time.”

But simply winning doesn’t matter in the hotly subjective world that’s major college football. It’s how you win especially against significantly inferior opposition.

The Spartans might not play another nationally ranked team until Nov. 21, in their 11th game of the season, against an Ohio State team that still sits atop the national rankings.

Now, that will undoubtedly tick off the Michigan apologists. And, quite frankly, nothing would please Mark Dantonio more than having a one-loss Wolverines ranked within the top 15 when Michigan State ventures to Ann Arbor on Oct. 17. It would provide Michigan State with the opportunity for a “quality” win that Air Force, Central Michigan, or any of the other sacrificial dregs on the schedule in the next month couldn’t provide.

“The objective coming into this week was getting the win,” said linebacker Riley Bullough. “We knew that it was going to be a challenge considering how emotional (the Oregon win) was and what it meant for this program. But now it’s a different challenge for us. We know that other teams will be gunning for us and we’ve got to be ready.”

This is the next step up the mountain for Michigan State. Handling success.

An emotional letdown against Air Force was inevitable. As passionately as Dantonio preaches that one game is no bigger than the next, even he would probably concede in a private moment that the Oregon victory before a huge national TV audience, a highly charged home crowd while playing host to nearly 200 recruits wasn’t just another game.

And while that was a “statement victory,” the next statement for Michigan State going forward is that it won’t fall prey to excessive praise. Everyone’s patting them on the back, congratulating them for Michigan State’s graduation to national football power if not the even more rarefied air of college football elite.

But it’s the next two months in which the Spartans can truly establish themselves as a power. That only happens by mercilessly plowing through the slouches on their schedule in the weeks leading up to the first monumental regular season game of the two-year-old College Football Playoff era No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 Michigan State.

That didn’t happen against Air Force.

The Falcons ran a triple-option offensive attack that relied on cut blocking, a technique that greatly bothers opposing defensive linemen.

It helped the Spartans that defensive line coach Ron Burton, who was an Air Force assistant for 10 years, offered examples on what to expect. Burton reminded his players all week: Use your hands. Stay lower than usual. And you can better maintain your balance against the cut blocking.

The Spartans gave up 279 rushing yards. Unheard of for this defense the last few years. But it spoke to the challenges facing them.

“The coaches told us, coming into this week, that we were something like 24-3, I think, in games after playing someone nationally-ranked,” Frey said. “We understood what the expectation was coming into this game. I think that what’s most important in anybody’s mind was that we won the game. And we won by a couple touchdowns.”

They won. They didn’t sustain any significant injury. It was a good game for Michigan State.

But amid their strive toward greatness within college football’s highly subjective world, the Spartans didn’t make a strongly convincing argument about their ability to dominate the lesser teams on their immediate schedule.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Drew Sharp is a writer for the Detroit Free Press.

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