On a 4^th and 1 play designed to sustain the drive, Kolton Browning ran to the endzone. The overtime touchdown sealed University of Louisana-Monroe’s win over the #8 Arkansas Razorbacks. ULM just knocked off the number 8 team in the land in their own house. The same ULM who hadn’t won their season opener since 2006, the same ULM who hasn’t had a winning season since ESPN started keeping W-L stats in 2002. There were mitigating factors, like the loss of Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson, but a team as talented and deep as Arkansas should be able to knock off ULM with their second string. This was a dang coaching mistake perpetrated by everyone’s favorite clown in head coach paint, John L. Smith.

So when I read Chris Vannini’s Free Press article today titled “Michigan State has no excuses for not winning the Big Ten this year" I get an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Logically, I agree: The Big Ten looks terrible this year, and MSU has the best combination of talent and eligibility to represent the Big Ten in Pasadena, despite some questions in the passing game. But still, my stomach feels wobbly at the idea of Michigan State being assigned the role of “Favorite”.

For this, fans owe one John L Smith a giant collective therapy bill. If you’ve rooted MSU football since prior to the arrival of Mark Dantonio, the scene which played out in Little Rock Saturday night is not all that shocking, it’s something we’re used to. Knock off a Goliath, lose to a David. It’s not solely John L’s fault, even St. Saban knocked off two top ten teams in 1998 while losing to Colorado State, Purdue and Indiana. And look at him.

But after a quarter century of inconsistent play and just two short seasons of ass-kicking football, MSU fans aren’t used to being the Big Ten’s steady hand. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening in spite of MSU’s inexperienced QB and receiver corps. As fans, this is a difficult role for us to embrace.

Two years is an eternity in the sports narrative and the last two years have been the best MSU football has had to offer since the 60’s. The Spartans have won 15 straight at home since the opener in 2010. Their five losses have all been to ranked teams. MSU was a missed punt block away from playing in the Rose Bowl last fall.

The national sports narrative doesn’t remember the torrential downpour in which Brady Quinn piloted Notre Dame to a come from behind win in 2006. They don’t remember Jaren Hayes valiantly trying to knock jump balls away from Braylon Edwards despite being 7 inches too short for the job. You do. You were there. You were cheering and screaming. You remember the clock rolling zeros in excruciating detail.

The body of evidence is present. MSU has been one of the most successful programs of the last two seasons . Nationally, no one thinks of MSU as the “sleeping giant” anymore, the little engine that could if they only could stop tripping on their own feet. They’ve forgotten all of our worst memories of MSU football.Maybe it’s time for us to try and do the same.

Well, it’s been a nice summer away, but today is August 1st and football occurs this month. This means one thing to you dear reader; Shaw Lane Spartans is back open for business. The blog is going to run from August 1st – National Signing Day this year. It’s going to be a whole lot of unnecessary roughness and poor grammar on your eyeballs man. So settle in, have a beer and hopefully we can watch and enjoy some good football together.

In the off-season, we did our Special Teams preview. We also blogged about the Recruiting Cycles of Football to help us all remember that MSU focuses on winning instead of recruiting during the football season. The Mrs. hit John Deyo so hard at the Women’s Clinic that he transferred to WMU. Finally, but far from the least important thing: WE, THE MSU FANS, GOT JOHN L SMITH HIRED AS THE HEAD COACH AT ARKANSAS! This isn’t just a blogging accomplishment, this is a life accomplishment.

MSU recruiting off-season fanfare: Caleb Benenoch commits to MSU in March and decommits in June. MSU has more solid commitments over the summer from Dylan Chmura(TE from Wisconsin, son of Hall of Famer Mark Chmura!!!), Darian Hicks, Trey Kilgore and Jay Harris. A mildly more squishy commit from Devyn Salmon a week or so ago. We’re good once he’s visited EL in my mind. Here’s Your Shield to come on these guys before the season starts.

Scoreboards:

You might be wondering why I picked such a big picture that overshadows a good chunk of the rest of the post, because the scoreboards are big and I thought it would be, er, uh. You get it. These scoreboards are going to be huge. Dantonio emphasized they will be the “largest in the state.” See what he did there? Also: Texas Tech got 27 yards rushing. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

On Penn State:

I’ll keep it short, because I’m tired of it and so are you. Football punishment seemed appropriate and necessary. I did not enjoy watching PSU have it’s program zombified by the Sandusky accusations, trial and convicition. I did not enjoy watching PSU have it’s program eviscerated to satisfy the NCAA’s moral, juicy, hypocritical center. I feel sorry for the PSU community who was uninvolved in this but is having to pay the price. Except for the denialists, it’s important to stand up for what you believe in, but not at the expense of learning the truth. Hopefully the victims can find their peace and the community can begin to move on.

Learn You Some Football

If you’ve not read any of Heck’s “Better Know A”… series this offseason, you should. He wrote pieces on Three Verticals, the Crack Toss, the Outside Zone, and Stunting. All of these links will make you better at watching football which in turn makes you a better person.

Anyway, more content later today. We’ll preview the Quarterback position which will probably turn out to be about 31 percent accurate. In the meantime, here’s a little something to get you pumped for 2012 courtesy of @Pietrang5.

As most of you know, John L Smith was hired today as a human placeholder for Arkansas for the 2012 season. While this doesn’t amount to a whole hell of a lot for Michigan State except a Nelson Muntz “HA! HA!” towards the South it’s kind of an intriguing instance of how truth can be Stranger Than Fiction. As I’ve been saying to anyone who would listen for the past couple hours, I wrote an “Open Letter to Arkansas AD Jeff Long to hire John L Smith”. Obviously it worked, because he’s now been given a 10 month contract worth 850K to basically stand in for a season as the Arkansas Head Coach.

The Spartanfreude has been particularly strong with this hire because John L actually did a nice job holding things together off-the-field, if anything he was too hard on kids from a disciplinary perspective. He improved APR all three years of his tenure according to the NCAA. He just didn’t win on the field. Maybe he was overwhelmed at the non-spreadiness of the Big Ten, maybe it was his wife’s cancer, maybe he’s a shitty coach who just got lucky in his prior jobs. Whatever it is, it didn’t work out and we’re over it now. Mostly.

So John L has just been handed the keys to a program which has experience unprecedented success in the past five years and a James Dean like flameout in the past few weeks. He through only the strangest of coincidences has been handed a talented team with talented coordinators who was and is a legitimate national title contender even still. Much like I suspect the plot of Space Cowboys was if I were to have seen it, he got called out of retirement to come save Earth from crashing into the sun and maybe even learn a lesson about life again. If he can save Donald Sutherland’s colostemy bag from freezing in space, so much the better.

Unlike the plot of Space Cowboys, I’m sure he’s not expected to save anything. If he manages to not make things exponentially worse, he’s succeeded and set the table for his replacement to be hired next year. Best of luck to him and I hope all goes well.

Speaking of Stranger Than Fiction

I ran my second half-marathon yesterday. I was feeling my oats and signed up for the Detroit Full Marathon. At 6’4” and 265 I’m kind of small for a 3-Technique Defensive Tackle, but pretty stout for a runner. How does this involve you? I’ll be raising money for the Make-A-Wish foundation in my training. Will occasionally pimp this here on this blog. Feel free to contribute for the kiddos. 

Dear AD Long,

Upon firing Bobby Petrino just a couple of short hours ago, you concluded your press conference by saying your coaching search begins now. As a fan of college football, I want to make sure the best candidates are connected with the best positions. As such, I hope this open letter may be of assistance to you.

You need to find a replacement who has a strong moral compass, graduates his players and provides balance to an athletic department that is increasingly football-centric. Best of all, he’s already been a coach at Arkansas for the glory years of Arkansas football. Yes, indeed-y, you need to hire back John L Smith.

As an MSU alum, it took us many years to figure out what the L in John L Smith stood for, but I assure you it was not Losing. In fact, John L Smith led the NCAA’s largest comeback victory in 2006 in an AWAY game. As I sat in a B-Dubs on that fateful day first drunk in sadness, then drunk on victory, I learned to believe in miracles again.

When John L Smith was the coach at Michigan State he encouraged a life of Renaissance. He climbed Kilimanjaro while piloting a fighter jet that he parachuted out of and ran with the bulls upon landing in the middle of a pack of lions. He never missed an opportunity to participate in an interesting life experience when he could have been doing his job. This is undoubtedly the kind of high character individual you want teaching your student athletes about life and football in that order.

Accountability. John L believes in coaching accountability, watch him willing to put things plainly regarding a special teams gaffe against THE Ohio State University.

Transition. A transition to a new JLS era would be virtually seamless. They coached together at Arkansas, Idaho, Utah State and Louisville. At Louisville, Petrino saved the day when JLS informed his players he was leaving at halftime of their bowl game. You might even say JLS owes Petrino a favor for covering a friend’s back at a disgraceful exit!  These guys work great together! But they work even better at covering for each other’s screwups!

Victory! John L Smith has a long tradition of winning on the big stage, knocking off a top 10 Wisconsin team so violently it caused Barry Alvarez to retire at the end of the year. He also took Michigan to overtime. TWICE! You would be crazy to not hire John L Smith.

Mr. Long, I would slap you before I would let John L Smith ride off into the Weber State sunset without at least making sure you knew what a gem you had right under your nose. Of course, even John L would slap you better than I would.

JOHN L SMITH

“A SLAP OF MORALITY”

MSU Pro Day

It’s the MSU Pro Day today and your favorite Seniors of 2011 will be performing their drills again for 35 GM’s from across the NFL,CFL, UFL, XFL, etc. For some candidates like Brian Linthicum, Keith Nichol, Todd Anderson and Chris D. Rucker this is the chance they didn’t have at the combine to impress the decision makers. For guys like Worthy and Robinson who did not have the most stellar measurables at the combine this is a chance to improve on “soft spots” in their performance. For guys like Cousins and Keshawn Martin, this is a chance to improve their mid-round draft stock. Mocking the Draft is interested to see if Cousins can “jockey for position in the second round.” Frequently, Pro Days serve as confirmations of what you already know about a guy. It’s a rarity that someone comes out of a pro day in MUCH better position than they came into it.

On an interesting note, I’ve heard some former and not-so-recent players will be there. Kendall Davis-Clark and David Herron, both JLS guys are rumored to be participating. There are others, they shall remain nameless until they are confirmed/not confirmed.

When Brady Hoke Is Recruiting, If He Wants Something, He'll Say Anything

Ace Anbender from MGoBlog interviews Wyatt Shallman on his commitment to UM. From the interview:

ACE: What did you get into when you talked to Coach Jackson? What did he tell you that firmed things up for you?

WYATT: We just talked about positions and how he sees me playing. It checked out with the things that I want to do.

ACE: Specifically, I know there have been a lot of questions when it comes down to position, how do they plan on using you when you come to school?

WYATT: At running back, and that's what I want to play, so that's why I liked it.

ACE: What do you think are your biggest strengths on the field, especially when it comes to being a running back. What do you bring that isn't necessarily what your more traditional running back might bring?

WYATT: There's not too many running backs who are 6'3", 250. I think I bring a lot of speed and power for that size of back, so I think that's what I bring to the game. I'm a one-cut running, so I think I'm going to bring back the power game to Michigan. I don't dance too much, that's what I think I'm good at.

Recruiting kids to a position you have no intention of keeping them in is a time-honored tradition as old as college football itself. This however borders on absurd, there is a zero percent chance that Shallman takes a snap as a running back in any sense other than a gimmicky end-around to appease the Running Back heart of UM’s Tight End or as a Rock-Toting Fullback. Last year’s fullback Stephen Hopkins had 11 carries for 43 yards, which is neither the number of carries it read like Shallman is expecting or the number of yards. To Ace’s credit, the next question in the series is about what weight the staff Shallman is expected to arrive at, which read to me like if you want to play RB, think about losing 20-30 lbs immediately.

Bonus Bits

Brian Hoyer is looking for a job as an NFL starting QB, if you’re hiring. Drew Stanton is visiting the Jets in what’s hopefully a move to get the Lions to decide between him and Shaun Hill. Munn Minute has a look at MSU’s reinvigorated NCAA hopes. TOC takes a long concerned look at the minefield of a West bracket. MSU gets some love for “promoting scholar-athlete excellence”. MSU follows up on that by topping the “Hoops & Helmet Rankings”.