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I try not to get overly personal in columns, but this time I might. A few years ago as a coach, there was a game I desperately wanted to win. The desire to win was internalized. There’s a long backstory, but I wanted it for our players, my family, the community that had embraced us as coaches. I didn’t sleep even one hour the night before it.
The game was a powder keg. Players were kicked out. A coach was kicked out. Fans were kicked out. At midcourt, the game was threatened to be cancelled unless folks could gather themselves.
Long story short: In the end, I made a bad call, electing to tell my team to hold the ball and get a last shot, good or bad, because it was tied and overtime was the worst case scenario. One of my players had an open three and I yelled, “don’t shoot!” because there was too much time left if he missed.
The ball was turned over a few seconds later, and we lost on a half-court shot. I’ll probably have nightmares about it until I die, watching the looks on the faces of family members in the moment they’re realizing they’re destroyed… and knowing it’s my fault.
In other words, Jim Harbaugh, I feel you, though not in front of as many people.
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Everyone that reads this stuff knows I love the Maize and Blue. Everyone who writes does it because at one point, they were fans first. Hiding that is lame. Switching allegiances based on where you go is disingenuous.
Basically, today sucked for Michigan fans, and it’s because winning is hard.
Michigan State won in an impossible way against Michigan because sometimes the other guys just need to learn how to win, and sometimes, you’re the beneficiary of that learning process.
In the end, no one will remember the oddities of the game before the final play. The officiating was as bad as you’ll see in college football, from a horrible targeting call upheld on Michigan senior and defensive captain Joe Bolden in the second quarter (that ushered him from the game), to a hideous review on a Michigan goal-line touchdown that was upheld, to countless gaffes that shaped the game as something of a comedy.
No one will remember Mark Dantonio, correctly going for it on fourth and 19 with two timeouts (calling one) with just under two minutes left, which led to an incomplete pass batted away by Jourdan Lewis of Michigan against Aaron Burbridge of MSU, who had himself a day.
Nope, no one will remember how the game was played at an elite level on both sides minus the varied mental mistakes, one turnover the entire time. That turnover, though, they’ll remember it forever.
Michigan punter Blake O’Neill basically needed to catch a football the way he’s done his entire life, not just as a punter, but since he started playing catch with his old man or friends in the yard in the fall. It hits your hands, you squeeze it.
He’s probably done it correctly over 1 million times if you count practice.
This one time, he didn’t. Teams likely don’t practice the “drop the punt to win the game so what do I do?” drill. O’Neill tried to show up with flowers at his ex-girlfriend’s workplace — knowing she was with the guy she dumped him for — in hopes it’d make it better by attempting to still kick it rather than cover it.
MSU recovered the ball, but more than that, a Spartan was able to gather the ball in the air with momentum heading toward the goal line. Michigan State scored and won. End of story.
It’s better to be lucky than good, but luck is the residue of design.
MSU has won a lot lately and Michigan hasn’t. Now, the Spartans have taken every game but one from the Wolves since Lloyd Carr departed at the end of the 2007 season.
They move on and remain championship contenders, flawed though they may be, oddly giving up deep passes on poorly thrown balls to Michigan all afternoon long. That will need to be shored up to take the ultimate step they desire.
Still, winning ugly is better than losing, and MSU has a PHD in winning ugly this season. Good enough is forever good enough.
Michigan will get there one day, and certainly the Wolverines are on the right trajectory. MSU is already there, holding onto its position like grim death.
Losing is cruel, and you have nightmares about your worst losses forever. Winning is hard, but when you figure out how to do it, you don’t give it up easily.
MSU proved a lot Saturday night. So did Michigan. The journey is long, and once you get going downhill on the right side of the mountain, getting stopped is tougher.
Nightmares for one. Utopia for the other. Forever.
