00:00We said it was the Spartans' time to shine.
00:03Michigan was playing UTEP.
00:05Who cares?
00:07Spartans playing the Fighting Irish under the lights in South Bend.
00:10Touchdown, Jesus, in the distance.
00:12We were going to see what the 2-0 Spartans were really made of.
00:15John, for a half, they were in it.
00:19They should have been leading at halftime.
00:21If they don't drop a touchdown and get a punt blocked,
00:25they might have had the lead against national title frontrunner Notre Dame.
00:30Now, as the game wore on, they got worn out.
00:32But they did a good job stopping the run, getting off the field on third down.
00:35And I thought they provided a foundation for what Pat Fitzgerald football teams are going to be.
00:39I think he gave you a belief this team can go to a bowl game in year one,
00:43which, I get it, is not the be-all, end-all.
00:46But for a program that's coming back from the dead, you see signs of life.
00:51I'm not ruling out that they beat somebody of significance and get a signature win.
00:55Finish what they had going in the first half against somebody later in November.
01:00But now I realize I am talking about a moral victory.
01:04And that gets people feeling a certain type of way.
01:06Moral victories don't exist.
01:08Where are you at?
01:09Well, they're at two wins.
01:10And if you're just looking at getting to a bowl,
01:13I would look and say they host Nebraska and Illinois.
01:16They're on the road to Wisconsin.
01:17That's their next three weeks, not necessarily in that order.
01:22You're looking at a 5-1 team?
01:24I mean, Nebraska.
01:26Well, they're dogs this week against Nebraska.
01:28But certainly.
01:29So they may be dogs in all of these games.
01:31But if you're going to play that way.
01:33Exactly.
01:33They were 30-point dogs and they played tight.
01:35Yeah.
01:35If you can stay in games and give yourself a chance.
01:38Now, I know quarterback, you know, two turnovers in that game.
01:42What have we seen from them at Toledo and Eastern Michigan?
01:46Like, they don't make those turnovers against like or if they're better than the opponents.
01:54So I'm not looking at Nebraska as any different than Michigan State.
01:59Certainly Wisconsin, not looking at any different than Michigan State.
02:02Illinois, same thing.
02:04Northwestern in there, too.
02:06And yeah, Northwestern is the next game.
02:08So I do think that if you're looking at this season going, you know, I think a lot of there
02:14were some preseason rankings of the 18 teams.
02:18And a lot of them had Michigan State at 17, some at 16, some even at 18, like the worst
02:23team in the Big Ten.
02:24They didn't play as the worst team in the Big Ten.
02:26They're not presenting themselves as the worst team in the Big Ten.
02:29The win total was four and a half.
02:32I would, I said at the beginning of the season, for Pat Fitzgerald, you take the over on that.
02:38And I think they're showing that the over should be there.
02:40Now, I'm not a believer in moral victories.
02:43But what I am a believer in is when you are a new coach in a new program and you
02:48have a
02:48lot of new players that weren't even a part of that program, you got to get buy-in.
02:52How do you get buy-in?
02:53How do you gain trust?
02:55Well, you go out and you show that what you are coaching, what you are preaching actually
02:59can work.
03:00Now, it didn't ultimately work against Notre Dame, but it did against Toledo and it certainly
03:06did against Eastern Michigan, you start to build trust from coach to player and player
03:11to coach.
03:12What are we good at doing?
03:13Well, let's do more of that.
03:15The players, all right?
03:17If they're going to put us in these positions to be successful, then I trust the coaches
03:22that they're going to give us the best opportunity to win.
03:26You got to have that buy-in so that when you get to week six, seven, eight, you don't
03:30have that proverbial, well, coach has lost the locker room.
03:34You don't lose the locker room when you have buy-in and you start to gain more buy-in
03:38when you're supposed to get actually boat raced and you don't.
03:43When you go into games and you're supposed to win and you do.
03:4630 point dogs.
03:48I mean, they're supposed to get run off the field.
03:51People don't like moral victories because moral victories are losses, right?
03:56And that's what it comes down to.
03:57Moral victories.
03:57And that was a loss.
03:57And it's a loss.
03:58People don't like losing.
03:59But Michigan State has been a bunch of losers, four straight losing seasons, nine and 27
04:05in the Big Ten in that time.
04:07They've been a loser program without leadership.
04:10Three different coaches now on their fourth, multiple athletic directors.
04:13You can say, I don't like moral victories because they're losses.
04:17Michigan State needs steps to get to where they want to be.
04:21And that felt like a step.
04:24You got to show a little bit of a pulse when you play a team like Notre Dame that you
04:28can
04:28get up for the fight.
04:29They were in the fight.
04:31Not for four quarters.
04:32And I get it.
04:33You get outlasted by a team with superior talent.
04:35But I would feel like you'd be encouraged from that performance as a Spartan fan.
04:40I won't speak for Spartan fans.
04:41We can take phone calls.
04:43248-539-9797.
04:46The early returns on the text.
04:47Next, Fitzgerald is just a louder Jonathan Smith, a rah-rah guy who can't coach football.
04:54Terrible hire.
04:55Said at the second they hired him, it's even worse now.
04:59I don't care what the final score was.
05:01We got dog walked all four quarters.
05:04Never even close.
05:05I don't think my Spartans will be competitive against anybody this year.
05:09This is a bizarro world.
05:11Another text said, take your moral victories and shove them.
05:14That never looked close if you watched it.
05:16I don't see another win on our schedule, let alone a, quote, signature win.
05:21At this point, I need to just take a step back.
05:23Are these Michigan fans?
05:25Because sometimes I think Michigan fans do this.
05:27They claim to be a Spartan fan, and then they rip their program.
05:29Do Spartan fans actually feel this way?
05:31We're not going to win another game the rest of the way?
05:33That feels like a Michigan fan trolling us.
05:36So I just want to call it what I think it is.
05:38I don't think it's trolling.
05:40No.
05:40There's usually some tells in the way people word things,
05:43or they'll throw in an LOL or something like that.
05:46But, you know, no.
05:47I think state fans think they have no talent,
05:50and they think that Notre Dame just kind of didn't need to do much to beat them,
05:55and that Michigan State really didn't show that much in the game.
05:59Another one says, if you watch that game start to finish,
06:02we weren't playing the same sport as Notre Dame.
06:04Another text, 44 rushing yards.
06:06We got outgained four times on the ground.
06:09TLP was under 23 minutes.
06:10There's just not that much there for Michigan State.
06:13Hey, we watched different games.
06:16I'm not going to sit here and say it was a winning effort.
06:19It wasn't a winning effort, clearly.
06:21Like, you couldn't throw the ball, and you couldn't reliably run the ball.
06:24But I did think that there were some things you could look at,
06:27and like I'm talking about, in regards to is there a heartbeat in East Lansing?
06:32And when they played Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois,
06:36I was a little surprised the way that Northwestern played against Colorado.
06:41Again, Colorado's not a world beater, but they handled their business.
06:44I still look at some of those other teams, and I say,
06:48is this going to be a team that can get to a bowl game for Michigan State?
06:53Yeah.
06:54Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois.
06:56Like, there are some wins on that schedule,
06:57and if you don't turn the ball over, if you don't shoot yourself in the foot,
07:01but I believe that they can.
07:05I'm not predicting any more than six wins.
07:08No, but it's very weird to me that first batch of texts,
07:11we were never in the game.
07:12It was 17-10 at the half.
07:15Again, you were...
07:16Michigan State dropped a touchdown.
07:18I get it.
07:18You got to catch the ball.
07:19He catches the ball.
07:20It's four more points for MSU.
07:22If it's a field goal game, only thing that changes is,
07:25guy catches football, but you were never in the...
07:28I get it.
07:28By the time that game ended,
07:30you were staring up at a team that had started to lean on you.
07:33Right.
07:33And your quarterback had been overwhelmed by the time that game was done.
07:36He probably needed the hot tub and the cold bath.
07:38You don't have as much talent as Notre Dame.
07:40I don't think anyone is sitting here saying,
07:42oh my gosh, that's so offensive.
07:44No, it was clear.
07:45Yeah.
07:45But if you're Pat Fitzgerald and you're trying to recruit,
07:50you're trying to show that you can be a respectable program,
07:54it's not going to happen all in one year.
07:57But you've got to show that so you can get some recruits
07:59so that you can convince some guys to come to East Lansing as transfers.
08:04I'm not going to shortchange the calls here because we got like,
08:07I don't know, like less than a minute till we have to hit the update.
08:10But we will hear from Spartan fans who have taken time to call in this morning.
08:13And maybe you agree with this first batch of texts that think we weren't in the game.
08:17We're not going to win.
08:17That didn't show me anything save for moral victories.
08:19Or maybe you were encouraged.
08:21Maybe you did see proof of concept, signs of life.
08:25Let Spartan fans speak for themselves.
08:27248-539-9797.
08:308 o'clock hours, our final hour before TJ joins us.
08:349 o'clock on Mondays, TJ Lang comes in the studio
08:36and we'll talk everything Lions after we kind of watch the rest of the league.
08:42Yeah.
08:42And got a sense of where we stack up
08:44and how you feel about this group at 1-1.
08:47So anyway, Spartan fans, we'll get to you next.
08:49It's 97-1.
Comments