...now back to Spartan football

At noon today, the Michigan State Spartans take on the Northwestern Wildcats at Spartan Stadium. I will be in my usual location, a few miles east of East Lansing, camped out in my basement with the game on the television.

It seems like the Spartans have righted the ship, to borrow that hackneyed cliche. After their three-game losing streak against Central Michigan, Notre Dame, and Wisconsin, I was about to give up on the season and begin X-ing out the days on my calendar until basketball's Midnight Madness.

So what does the football team do? They beat Michigan in a heart attack-enducing game in which the Spartans played their best 56 minutes of football all year only to see Tate Forcier almost single-handedly bring the Wolverines back from the dead. Luckily, State made the plays in overtime to win, and prevented me from tailspinning into a deep depression, with visions of the Hobbit-like Forcier in my head.

Last week, State went down to Champaign-Urbana and beat an Illinois team even more dreadful than I'd imagined. Still, one has to give credit to the Spartans for coming out focused and jumping on the Illini immediately. After Danny Fortener's pick six early in the third quarter, giving the Spartan a 24-0 lead, the game was essentially over.

Now the pesky Wildcats come to town. Northwestern brings their big brains and high GPAs to East Lansing trying to, once again, ruin MSU's Homecoming. The last two Homecoming games I attended in person (2005 and 2007) were made miserable by the Wildcats. In the gray, rainy drizzle of Homecoming '05, Northwestern crushed MSU, 49-14. That was, without a doubt, the worst MSU football game I ever attended in person. I remember sitting with my dad, and we were so disappointed and despondent that we left the game at halftime--that was the first time in my life that I left a Spartan football game before the final gun. The 2007 game was high scoring and exciting, but the Wildcats pulled it out 48-41 in overtime, and was frustrating due to MSU's complete inability to stop NU's spread offense.

It's probably for the best that I don't watch this game in person. If the Spartans lose to Northwestern this year, perhaps the university should schedule a different team for future Homecomings.

If MSU plays with focus, they should win. But given Northwestern's track record, I definitely don't count them out. I'll go ahead and predict a 28-20 Spartan victory.