Hey Witch here’s some local speculation on the big game, with linkies and stuff.
http://www.oregonlive.com/collegefootball/index.ssf/2014/09/tuesday_morning_news_notes_lin_1.html
The nice thing about this game is that a loss will not necessarily eliminate either team’s chances of still playing for the national title… as it would likely have in the past. I think we will see a few… maybe even all of the teams in the inaugural playoff at 11-1 or even 10-2.
That seems to be the consensus, especially in the Pac-12 (which of course I pay the most attention to) which looks to have several good teams this year.
The Pac-12 will be a meat grinder this year.
You gonna die for some chickens? Someone is. Somebody gets to stay in the playoff conversation while the other has to go back and start over in the rankings from about #10 or #11. IF and it’s a huge IF MSU wins I’ll be curious to see how much the pollsters and computers still either buy into the B1G or continue to not. Would they jump MSU over Auburn from the SEC? The line is 11 last I checked so Sparty has to assume the underdog role…again. Like Nebraska last year. Like Ohio State. Like Stanford.
I think the biggest question is this – does offense progress faster in the early season or is defense king early on? If Oregon can run their offense on their timing and terms they win. If MSU can turn it into a 28-24 slog or better yet (for MSU) a 17-14 game they’ll win. I read an article on Grantland about how MSU thrives on defense in an offense happy game. They only play ONE defense. 4-3. Straight up. You put out 4 wide receivers they have them all covered man on man. BUT it’s the way they run the one defense. It’s all about reads. These guys have played this same defense using their own calls and a few zone blitzes thrown in it’s repetition to these guys as to where they should be and knowing where a teammate is.
With Dantonio I have adopted the same quiet confidence I had in Scotty Bowman. He’s seen this before, he’s got this. Teams scored 70% of their points early on MSU last year. He knows ways to squeeze them later on. They didn’t give up a touchdown in the second half in 9 games last year.
I know Oregon has a great fucking team. They have more athletes than anybody else. If things work for them early THEY could break the late TD stat. A few times. I know Autzen Stadium has swallowed teams (Michigan LOL) in the past. I just have a hunch MSU can keep it close and hopefully win it late. I like their attitude.
That’s what makes me most nervous, MSU’s D is being compared to Stanford’s and Stanfords all but shut us down for 3 quarters before Oregon got some momentum, but it was to little too late to avoid the L. We have some greater size in our D and our backs, but will it be enough against smash mouth D?
Yikes they saying it could be 97 degrees Saturday PM,
https://weather.yahoo.com/united-states/oregon/eugene-2400539/
97? Yikes!
Ha! Very cool! Thanks!
Enjoy this one I found on YouTube (I Love the jazz music he set the theme to):
Published on Sep 1, 2014
Since I love Saul Bass, the 60’s and HBO’s Game of Thrones, I made an alternative title sequence.
Here is the result. Enjoy! (Inspired by “Hunter Sanders” 90’s concept also.)
Joe Rexrode @joerexrode 12m
Narduzzi asked about heat, other factors:“The factor is that offense. OK? That’s what we’re looking at. That’s only factor we care about.”
Hey There’s a Sparty fan out here in Oregon!
LOL, good for them! Not a bad job either for farm equipment
I see now MSU is a 13 point underdog. That’s two touchdowns. MSU hasn’t been a two TD underdog in FIVE years and that includes 3 Big Ten titles (or shares) and games against Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State.
The guy did that by hand with a rake!
Pretty good as well for not having the ability to see it from above while he raked. Damn, that’s hard work, a rake
Michigan State is bringing a secret weapon to Autzen Stadium! A feller who know about winning. I will say this about MSU, I think they have a wonderful coaching troika (well Rick Comley left the the MSU hockey team this year but he did win the NCAA title in E. Lansing in 2007 and Northern Mich in 1991) now duo in all college sports. Find me a better pair than Dantonio and Izzo.
Honorary captain Tom Izzo wants MSU football players to seize moment
12:43 PM, September 5, 2014 |
By Joe Rexrode
Detroit Free Press Sports Writer
When Tom Izzo stands in front of the Michigan State football team Saturday, he’ll tell them about a trip his MSU men’s basketball team took 15 years ago to North Carolina — an opportunity that reminds him of this one for Mark Dantonio’s program.
Dantonio asked Izzo last week to serve as MSU’s honorary captain for Saturday’s game between the No. 7 Spartans (1-0) and No. 3 Oregon Ducks (1-0) at Autzen Stadium (6:30 p.m., Fox).
Izzo flew out with the team Thursday and will give a pregame speech Saturday, then roam the sidelines for perhaps the biggest nonconference game in college football this season.
“I might go out there and tackle a referee, you never know,” Izzo joked today in a phone interview.
In seriousness, he wants Dantonio’s players to grasp what they have in front of them.
“Just relating the progression they have to take and the opportunity they have,” Izzo said of his planned speech. “If you look back, since I’ve been (at MSU), how many times have you really had a chance to do something like this? Where we’re really ranked and they’re really ranked? I went down to Notre Dame a few times, I was at Nebraska (in 1996) when we got beat (badly), I was at Oregon (in 1998) when we got killed out here. But I don’t think something like this has happened since the ’60s, you know? And they get to be a part of something, put their own stamp on it. And that’s the way I looked at that North Carolina game. One more step toward that ultimate goal.”
That would be the national championship, which Izzo’s Spartans won to cap the 1999-2000 season. A turning point for his program, he said, was a November 1999 win at UNC, with star point guard Mateen Cleaves injured. The previous season, the Spartans made the Final Four for the first time in 20 years — just as the MSU football team reached the Rose Bowl for the first time in 26 years last season, beating Stanford and finishing 13-1.
Could Saturday’s game set up MSU football for a national championship? Perhaps. But win or lose, Izzo said, Dantonio and MSU athletic director Mark Hollis — who served as the team’s honorary captain last week — deserve recognition for scheduling a game like this. And the week leading up to the game should be a program boost, too.
“Have you ever seen more publicity for a game?” Izzo said. “You don’t even know Michigan and Notre Dame are playing, do you? Everything on the talking heads for a week and a half has been this game. … (Dantonio’s teams have) won at Ohio State and they won at Michigan. But I think when you do it in the nonconference against a top-five opponent … . I hate to say it, but if we lose the game, everybody will say it cost us a chance to be in the final four and all that. I don’t think that’s true, but they’ll say it.
“But I told Mark that this is a bigger program game than it is a team game for this year, I think. Because so many people are talking, ‘Hey, Michigan State’s willing to go on the road and play this game.’ It’s gonna help develop a little bit of who we are, that, I think, will carry the program for several years, not just this team.”
And this weekend is another example of how the football and basketball programs are helping each other.
“You know what? It was a big thrill for me, just because I know how important those things are to him,” Izzo said of being asked to serve as honorary captain. “And to me, his career is reminding me so much of mine.”
As for Izzo’s team, he said individual workouts have been “really good,” with two hours a week of team workouts set to begin again Sept. 15. Izzo said senior forward Branden Dawson recently suffered a minor hand injury that is “nothing that’s anything,” and he and his staff will be back on the road recruiting Tuesday.
Told today the Lindy’s preseason magazine picked MSU to finish ninth in the Big Ten, Izzo said: “No way, really? That’s amazing; I hadn’t seen anyone with us lower than around 17th (in the nation). … I think we’re gonna be better than I thought, to be honest with you.”
The odds makers must be drunk. I can’t see MSU being -12.5 to any foe, especially at this point in the season. I also think the OU is too high at 56. If I was going to be in Vegas this weekend I would stroll into the Harrah’s sports book and take some of that action.
I know, what the fuck does Sparty have to do, right? Name the teams that have beaten Ohio State, Michigan and Nebraska in the same year. Won 3 straight bowl games. Beat an upper echelon SEC team in Georgia in a bowl game 2 years ago. Stanford’s still kicking around the Top Ten somewhere aren’t they?
I think the OU number is driving the point spread. If the OU was say 46 the spread would be like 8 or 9.
May the team that does the thing most and wins the points win.
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