Time is counting down until mid-term elections and I have only one thing on my mind right now. That’s right! The Michigan State Spartan Men’s football team is slated at number five in the most recent BCS rankings.
Personally I’ve never cared much for the BCS. That stands for Bowl Championship Series for those that don’t know. Kinda like WTF stands for ...well I think most people get the gist.
I don’t particularly like how the rankings are compiled. It’s a complicated process that includes three components: USA Today Coaches Poll, Harris Interactive College Football Poll and an average of six computer rankings. Each component will count one-third of a team's overall BCS score in the BCS standings.
Question: Why does a computer have the same clout as a coach when the BCS crunches numbers? Did the Supreme Court have a hand in this? I kid, I kid. Sorta.
Then again...
It’s always different when your team is having a Cinderella season. I will stand firmly behind the BCS ranking until it turns against us (as it inevitably will) sweeping away any hope of a shot at the national championship.
Frankly, I’d rather see the Spartans play in the Rose Bowl any day over the BCS Championship.
The Rose Bowl is literally the gold standard of bowl games. The BCS Championship always seems to bring confusion and disarray to the party; specially after the regular season games are played. Without a true playoff system there will always be pretenders to the throne.
Not to mention there is something a bit hinky about a championship whose teams are initially ranked by a couple of football polls and at least one neurotic computer with delusions of grandeur. Can you say HAL 9000? Perhaps, without naming names, I should include some coaches in that category as well.
And yet Michigan State is ranked number five this week. Will wonders never cease?
The Iowa Hawkeyes may have something to say about that. As long as we’re ranked in the top five, everyone with a BCS Championship complex is going to be gunning for us. It is my hope that Coach Dantonio’s gridiron machine can focus its penchant for causing mayhem at frat parties, breaking bad with their terms of probation and reckless driving charges into a continued winning season.
Or not. We’ll just have to see.
Not since 1966, when my aunt Jane and uncle Dave attended MSU have the Spartans had an 8-0 opening to the season. Back then Spartan defensive lineman Bubba Smith, quarterback Jimmy Raye, wide receiver Gene Washington, rover George Webster and barefoot kicker Dick Kenney led State to a 9-0-1 season (the tie being the controversial “Game of the Century” against Notre Dame).
Michigan State and Notre Dame both laid claim to being national champions that year.
Family lore
As a matter of fact, my aunt Jane (my mom’s sister) was living on campus at Michigan State in the same dorm as Bubba Smith. To this day she fondly claims he owes her a minimum of six Marlboro Cigarettes--having bummed them off her in the hallway during an age when smoking was cheap and still socially acceptable. Bubba would ask her for a smoke in a long, drawn-out Texas drawl that couldn’t be refused. How cool was that?
My Spartan football enthusiasm is cranked all the way to code “Green and White”. To top it off, a couple of weeks ago my beloved wife surprised me with a Michigan State-theme garden gnome, decked out in green and white sporting a big, white Spartan logo on his even bigger green, gnome-y hat.
I have christened him “Sparty-cus, the Gnarly Gnome.” Sparty-cus can be seen daily in the unenviable capacity posing as my new avatar on my Facebook page. (See pic below).
Regardless of how the season plays out, Michgian State has proven itself a force to be reckoned with on the playing field. Finally. Off the field is another matter entirely. There is much work still to be done. The BCS ranking notwithstanding, this team has much to prove. To themselves, their coach and their fans.
