Yesterday, I missed most of the game live. I was late coming back from a movie which caused me to miss most of the first quarter and then my wife was delayed coming home from a workshop in Ann Arbor by the dude shooting up I-96. As a result my folks and I spent the time from getting home until about midway through the third quarter helping my kids get ready for a Halloween party. Then actually taking the kids to the party.

I was salty about it all. I “hate” Wisconsin. I hope they never win at anything, least of all against us. I have the opportunity to watch both Badgerfreude and have my team be the team inflicting it. As we were getting ready to walk out the door, the Mrs. offered me the opportunity to stay home and I declined for fear of it being a trap. (It wasn’t, I think.) As I was driving to the party MSU continued to struggle on offense and I grew increasingly frustratedangryupsetannoyed. “How can any team’s offense be THIS BAD? There have been times this year I’ve thought an offense with 11 true freshmen might play better. How is the defense going to continue to be part of the team when they are clearly BCS caliber and the offense is not? And Holy God we’re going to lose to Bielema again and I hate that smug shitsipper.” And then…

“It’s just a game.” The first time it rattled through that list of surly, crappy thoughts I didn’t completely believe it. A dude got shot on I-96 yesterday. He’ll be ok thankfully, in fact, he may not agree with the “It’s just a game” sentiment:

Workers at the Mobile station told 7 Action News that the man hit by a bullet refused their help and just wanted to go to the World Series. He was eventually treated by an ambulance crew at the scene and taken to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital of Livingston where he is listed in stable condition.

Yesterday a man who’s much angrier about something than I am about a football game injured someone and inconvenienced thousands of people. As a result, I missed some of a football game live. I watched the whole thing later. We went to the party and the kids had a great time. I ended up “watching” the end of the game with Ty and bunch of other friends on twitter. Celebrating with them was a much richer experience than it would have been to watch the game alone. It’s just a game.

Anyway, enough about all that shit.

First off, oh hai there Bret BieLOLema. I know you lost Joel Suave and all but I bet you didn’t know our defense is rugged like Sam Elliott and shit did you? I cannot think of a more excellent way to break Wisconsin’s 21 game win streak than to steal one from Bielema at the end of the game. In case you were wondering, this makes for late game heroics in 2008, 2011(regular season) and 2012. MSU has also won the last three regular season match-ups which would normally constitute a winning streak if it weren’t for Roughing the Punter. Early prediction: MSU wins the 2017 game.

There had been a lot of talk this week about MSU dropping three conference games by six points. OSU and Michigan stand out particularly as games where a simple make instead of a miss on a FG try have MSU at 6-2 instead of 4-4 going into the Wisconsin game. I’m going to go ahead and chalk yesterday up as a “Shoulda Lost”. If Wisconsin doesn’t lose Suave, something tells me they’d have put up more than 10. After two “Shoulda Wons”, I’ll take a Shoulda Lost. If you were to go back and poke at the 2010 and 2011 teams I’m pretty sure you’d find a handful of Shoulda Losts. 2010 Northwestern and 2011 Minnesota I’m looking at you.

This offense plays well when they pass the ball with some urgency. So much so that I wrote a post encouraging some hurry-up play a couple of weeks ago. At this point in the season we are far enough along to know that our defense is filthy good. If it gets MSU an extra 10-14 points a game to let Maxwell gamble a bit more, let him do it! Even if he Rick-Sixes his way through the season I think you still come out ahead in that scenario.

The counterpoint to that argument is that with the Legends Division crown effectively out of reach and a bowl game pretty well assured now. Everything should be about preparing the offense for 2013. Next year MSU has a stupid favorable schedule skipping Wisky, PSU and OSU and getting Indiana, Purdue and Illinois. If you want to win the Big Ten MSU’s schedule is about as favorable as it can be.

It’s just a game. And MSU Shoulda Lost. But they didn’t and it was awesome. On to Nebraska.