Guest author's take on this past weekends college football in the State of Michigan.
MSU takes a step forward while UM makes history in a terrible way
By Max DeMara
It’s often thought that East Lansing and Ann Arbor are two completely different college towns that are worlds apart. It seems that in a way on Saturday this sentiment was proven to be eerily true.
Kickoff at both Spartan Stadium and Michigan Stadium occurred at the same time, 12 noon. In both destinations, fans were treated to a picture perfect day for football with the sun shining and clouds nearly absent in the sky.
That’s just about where the similarities ended for this day, almost.
Michigan State literally raced out to a huge early lead, powered by their resurgent ground attack. Jehuu Caulcrick rumbled all over UAB defenders, Brian Hoyer showed confidence and poise when leading the passing attack, and the receiving corps hauled in impressive catches and ran sparkling reverses. On the other side, Pat Narduzzi’s new look defense was aggressive all day long, stuffing the Blazers and flying all over the field to rack up sacks and stops.
By halftime, it was only a question of when the starters would come out and not if. Even with the reserves, the Spartans remained aggressive adding field goals and a touchdown, en route to a convincing 55-18 victory in front of an appreciative crowd.  Mark Dantonio’s dress rehearsal was largely errorless, giving the Spartan faithful a guarded confidence about their team.
Down the road in Ann Arbor the script followed suit, right? After all, the Wolverines were loaded on offense this season and the sky was seemingly the limit.
Nobody told the Appalachian State Mountaineers about any of that. The little guy played with confidence in the big guy’s “Big House.†The Mountaineers shockingly led Michigan going into the half, overwhelming them with their team speed. In the second half, Michigan would surely pull away and flex their championship caliber muscle.
Wrong again. Instead, Michigan allowed the Mountaineers to hang around in the half that means the most to gain the worst possible thing; confidence. Michigan seemed to have the game won when Mike Hart rumbled for a back breaking long touchdown score in the fourth quarter. Still, nobody told the Mountaineers that it was over. Quarterback Armanti Edwards methodically marched the offense down field. They were knocking on Michigan’s door again, and they broke the door down with a field goal to lead by two with only a slim margin of time left.
Michigan is a dangerous team even with seconds remaining, and this was proven as Chad Henne threw a strike to Mario Manningham into Mountaineer territory. One more chance to avoid embarrassment rested on the leg of Jason Gingell with six seconds left on the clock. The winning field goal was thunderously blocked and the Mountaineers recovered setting off a party in Michigan Stadium that will be cherished and passed down for years, unless you wear maize and blue.
Shockwaves have been reverberating through the college football world for hours. How could this happen to a pre-season favorite? How could a supposed cupcake do this to us?
Spartan fans know these feelings all too well. Perhaps maybe these schools weren’t so far apart on Saturday as it seems.
After all, wasn’t Ann Arbor’s script supposed to be played out in East Lansing?
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