Michigan State-Notre Dame Links and Discussion Thread
Posted by kj on Thursday, September 18th, 2008
A few links from opposition territory:
- A defense of the indefensible: Charlie Weis (guest post at Rivalry, Esq.).
- Michigan’s miscues against the Irish set to a whimsical musical score (The House Rock Built).
- Attempting to debunk the idea that Michigan handed the game to Notre Dame (Kelly Green).
There’s not much in the way of game previews from the Fighting Irish blogging community yet. I’ll try to post links to a couple when/if they appear.
Here are a couple more MSU-centric links:
- G0EL’s preview: He gives MSU the advantage everywhere except Notre Dame’s passing game against the MSU pass defense. Limiting that advantage is the key to the game, IMO.
- Adam Rittenberg on Javon Ringer’s workload. Factoid: Ringer squats 600 pounds. I think that’s a lot.
Speaking of Ringer, he’s starting to get some Heisman hype, showing up at #7 on SI.com’s Heisman Watch list this week. The Big Ten Bloggers group (of which I am nominally a member, despite my stubborn refusal to talk mostly about basketball, even during football season) discussed Ringer’s Heisman chances in their roundtable this week.
The unanimous consensus is that the odds of Ringer taking home the hardware are slim to none. I tend to agree, although I think it’s more a question of team performance than individual performance. At the rate Ringer is seeing the ball, he’s bound to rack up some pretty impressive numbers, even against tougher Big Ten defenses. But I don’t see MSU building its team profile quickly enough to get him in the national spotlight.
Data: In the last 50 years, there have been only four winners from teams with four losses (which would be a very good finish for MSU) and no winners from teams with more than four losses. The list of four-loss Heisman winners is pretty impressive: Tim Brown, Bo Jackson, George Rogers, Steve Owens. In the words of those snobs from the Downtown Athletic Club, “Heisman winners have always been associated with winning teams.”
Anyway, Ringer will certainly be a joy to watch for the remainder of the season (if he doesn’t get hurt; knock on wood). And hopefully MSU will be a “winning team,” just probably not an elite one.
Saturday’s game is slated for 3:30 on ABC. Yours truly will be in the upper reaches of Spartan Stadium to take this one in. I was there two years ago for the meltdown in the rain, as well. The main thing I remember walking out of the stadium after the game was that no one seemed all that surprised we had blown the lead and given the game to Notre Dame. It was par for the course at that point. That night was effectively the end of the John L. Smith era.
This game, we hope, will be a key moment in the dawning of the Mark Dantonio era–a chance to show that this version of the MSU football team can take care of business at home against a rival that comes in with a weaker team.
Go State! Beat the Irish!
Filed in football discussion, links2 responses so far
2 Responses to “Michigan State-Notre Dame Links and Discussion Thread”
witless chumon 19 Sep 2008 at 10:44 am 1“despite my stubborn refusal to talk mostly about basketball,”
Have I been reading a different blog or is there something wrong in this sentence, kj?
kjon 19 Sep 2008 at 11:21 am 2Yeah, I thought about that after I published this post. That sentence is technically incorrect.
I sort of don’t count the football posts as real blogging, since I don’t think I’m providing much in the way of informed, insightful commentary. I think of them as being more like random message board posts that I post here because I happen to have the forum to do it.