DotComp: It's early, and it's only one win, but it just felt like Michigan State had to have it

EAST LANSING, Mich. - It was merely a two-point victory over an unranked, non-conference opponent. But it felt like so much more than that. You could hear it and feel it from the fans on Saturday night at Spartan Stadium, and you could see it in the way these college players rejoiced in having earned a 42-40, double-overtime victory over Boston College. Maybe it seemed so big because we all know that a loss would have been so damaging, maybe undeservedly so. But players, coaches and even fans and media don’t make the rules. However, we can sure feel them. And Michigan State football needed this win, not only to get to 2-0, not only for their players to gain some confidence in one another, and trust in one another, but also to get the whole football community to believe there’s reason to keep paying attention.  I’m not sure why, but I sense that Spartan fans - and maybe most college football fanbases around the country - are a bit more doubtful than they used to be. There have always been fair-weather fans. But I used to describe Michigan State fans as being good poor-weather fans. But I had a feeling that if Michigan State had lost this game, the number of empty seats for next week’s game against Youngstown State would have been excessive. There will still be plenty of empty seats. But there would have been more if Michigan State had lost this game.  Many fans would have felt they already had attended two weekends of tailgate parties, and that would be enough for a while, and they would be back for the noon Homecoming game against UCLA in five weeks. Yes, there is only one home game in the next five weeks. That’s college football. We spend nine months of off-season talk, prepping for these quasi religious rituals, and then we go 27 days without a home game from mid-September to mid-October. That’s coming fast. But it’s not coming with a 1-1 record. It’s coming with a 2-0 record. Such a difference. Should we really care that much about ticket sales and butts in the seats? Well, it’s a barometer of interest. And interest in college football remains massive in terms of TV audience and gambling problems. But when it comes to support for Dear Old U, the light might be flickering in some locales, and I suspect that Michigan State is teetering on being one of them.  But this win not only ensured some carryover interest, it did something more: it helped Michigan State fans realize, probably subconsciously, that ‘The Old College Try’ still exists. Have you ever heard of ‘The Old College Try’? It was an expression that I first heard in the 1970s, and was probably around for decades prior to that. It was a colloquialism that wasn’t applied specifically to sports, but it put into words one of the chief differences between college football and pro football. The college guys were out there playing for each other, playing for Dear Old U, and in East Lansing, they played for Michigan State University, and for Michigan State College before that, and for Michigan Agricultural College before that.  In this new uncertain age of name, image and likeness, and the transfer portal, and a roster of 41 scholarship players who weren’t on campus 10 months ago, there are fair questions about the the hearts and minds of these players wearing Michigan State uniforms. It’s not their fault. It’s just their era.  Throughout the off-season, I had so many friends and Michigan State fans tell me that they were feeling their fandom slipping away, partly because they were unfamiliar with so many players on the roster.  I know a guy who used to take pride in memorizing the names, jersey numbers and hometowns of EVERY player on the roster, back when he was a kid, when he was a middle schooler, when he was a high schooler, and through his college years, and decades into manhood.  When I talked to that guy last Tuesday, he said he was astonished by the number of Michigan State players he had never heard of. He thought he had kept up with it during the off-season, but the flood of unknowns shook him. Well, those unknowns met a universal familiarity on Saturday night at Spartan Stadium. You might not have memorized their names, and you might not know their numbers, but there were legions of Michigan State football players wearing green and white, and they were hitting like hell, and straining like mad to win this game. And you were straining right along with them. And suddenly, it all felt normal again. And it felt good. (MORE DotComp inside SpartanMag).