Cardinal Devil Magic used to be the form of pixie dust which always seemed to carry a Major League Baseball team in the state of Missouri to a playoff series victory.
The last two years (this one included), Royal Devil Magic has kept good baseball fortune in the Show Me State, with Kansas City coming back from the dead in another elimination game and soaring after that Houdini act.
In college football, we’ve seen a number of individual seasons graced by the fates, smiled upon by the randomness of sports. Think of Auburn in 2013, Notre Dame in 2012, and Florida in 2006, among other examples.
Sometimes, however, teams either fall into the living hell of never getting the right breaks for years on end… or step into a bright sunshine in which every unsteady step lands on a firmer rock. A curved pathway is made straight. Seasons come, but fortune never goes — not when the going is beyond good.
Michigan State inhabits that spacious mansion, much as the Royals currently do, and much as the Seattle Seahawks did for a two-year period… until that one pass play in Arizona against the New England Patriots.
The magic-carpet-ride quality of Michigan State is something you can’t explain, just as the Spartans’ previous period of constant frustration also existed outside the ability of mere mortals to adequately describe.
Let’s first deal with the heartbreak which preceded the current era of prosperity in East Lansing:
Michigan State, for one thing, got jobbed out of the 2010 Big Ten title. The Spartans had the best record in the three-team head-to-head comparison involving Ohio State and Wisconsin, but were the one team to not get a BCS bowl invite. Wisconsin went to the Rose to face TCU, and Jim Delany pulled quite a lot of strings — ones he shouldn’t have pulled — to pit Ohio State against Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl.
Beyond that off-field gut-punch, Michigan State teams suffered memorably in various on-field situations.
Think of the wrenching way in which the Spartans lost the 2011 Big Ten Championship Game to Wisconsin, with the Badgers’ punter flopping and buying a running-into-the-kicker call in the final minutes of regulation. That’s the kind of moment which had been commonplace for Michigan State over the years. In 2009, Larry Caper was all alone in the end zone for what would have likely been a game-winning touchdown at Notre Dame. However, Kirk Cousins floated the pass just beyond Caper’s fully-outstretched hands, and when Cousins threw an interception at the Notre Dame 4 just moments later, a brutal loss was sealed.
Michigan State lost five bowl games in a row as the 2010 season concluded. The years came and went, and the Spartans — it’s becoming harder to remember this — were the Clemson of the Midwest at the time. Today, it’s better said that Michigan State was the UCLA of the Midwest, given that Clemson doesn’t squander prosperity anymore.
In many ways, the Michigan State program came of age in a 2013 Rose Bowl championship season, but while that year marked the full emergence of Mark Dantonio’s operation, the seeds were planted the previous two seasons in bowl games that cut against the long run of history.
In the 2012 Outback Bowl, Michigan State trailed Georgia, 16-0. The Spartans scrambled back to tie the game with 14 seconds left in regulation. They then watched Blair Walsh — now an NFL kicker — miss a 42-yard field goal which would have won the game in overtime. They benefited from Georgia coach Mark Richt becoming hyper-conservative. MSU survived two overtime stanzas and then won in the third, as Walsh’s 47-yard kick was blocked.
In the 2012 (December) Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, Michigan State looked dead as a doornail against TCU, mustering just 76 first-half yards and trailing 13-0. The score should have been 17-0, but TCU dropped an easy touchdown pass and had to settle for a field goal. In the fourth quarter, still trailing 13-7, MSU got the gift it needed when it needed it. TCU muffed a punt to give a struggling Spartan offense a chance to score seven points without having to mount a sustained drive. Even though TCU bombed in a field goal of over 50 yards inside the final three minutes, Michigan State and freshman quarterback Connor Cook had gained a fresh supply of confidence. Cook — who did not start that game (Andrew Maxwell did) — began to establish his reputation as a classic college football “winner” on that night in Tempe, Arizona. He led the Spartans to a late field goal and a 17-16 victory.
Something had changed.
Two and a half years later, Michigan State is still pulling close games out of the fire. The Spartans are fortunate enough to get the right bounce or break when they have to have it, but they’ve been good enough to take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way. That sweet spot, a happy marriage of skill and chance, is something Michigan State just doesn’t know how to relinquish. It’s really rather amazing, in much the same way that the Royals — trailing by at least three runs heading into the eighth inning of a playoff elimination game in each of the past two seasons — have somehow climbed out of trouble and managed to not lose a single game in the American League Championship Series (6-0 heading into Toronto for Game 3 of the 2015 edition on Monday night).
The improbable escapes just keep coming for Michigan State.
In the 2015 Cotton Bowl, the Spartans trailed by 20 points entering the fourth quarter. They needed a wildly improbable offensive facemask penalty on Baylor to stay alive. They then needed a blocked field goal AND a decent return to set up their offense in good position to tally the winning score in a 42-41 victory. Great skill, great resilience, great determination… and really great fortune.
Earlier this season against Oregon (in a game which feels like a year ago, not a month ago), the Spartans did well to hold the Ducks under 30 points. Yet, if Vernon Adams doesn’t air-mail an open Byron Marshall in the final minutes, Michigan State probably loses.
Given the roll Mark Dantonio’s on right now, that play just doesn’t happen to Michigan State anymore. It used to, but it doesn’t in the present tense.
Then, of course, came Saturday in the Big House in Ann Arbor, and a play which will live forever in the annals of college football’s delicious absurdity.
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Cardinal Devil Magic? That’s SOOO 2013.
Royal Devil Magic? That’s the world we live in now.
Sparty Devil Magic? Michigan State and the Royals simply cannot go wrong.
Given how much those two fan bases had to endure over the previous 25 years, it’s reasonable to say that they’re being paid back in an appropriate manner.
