FanNation - The Republic of Sport

I flew cross-country on a red-eye Saturday morning so that I wouldn't miss a 12pm non-conference game played through a constant driving rain vs. a Sun Belt team. Aside from the kickoff to open the second half, I didn't miss a single play of this game. The most important lesson that I learned from it all? That dry clothing is a vastly underappreciated luxury.

Other than that, not much. In a game like this, it's the unforced horrors that cost teams the most -- often on special teams. If this Michigan State team again finds itself in a game where the weather is more of an obstacle than the opposition, then this experience provides at least one happy example that they can prepare and adapt and play safe, careful, reasonably mistake-free football. But unless they play in another monsoon, this game is mostly a footnote in the book of clues regarding what kind of team this is.

Other little things I noticed...

Javon Ringer wasn't playing on the same field as everyone else. On a day when at least 5 of the 22 players on every down were slipping and hitting the turf with only minimal or even zero help from an opposing player, Ringer ran as if his shoes and the floor of Spartan Stadium were two halves of a Velcro strap. On a couple of runs at nearly full speed, he came to an abrupt stop and made a 90 degree course correction without showing the slightest sign that the weather even existed, let alone was slowing him down. That supernatural ability would have frustrated any defense chasing him yesterday.

Combine that with his intense workload for this game, and it begins to look as if he really can carry his team -- even when the rest of it is sliding around and falling flat on its butt.

Another lesson is that -- like dry clothes -- a disciplined, competent kicking game is also something you don't appreciate until it isn't there anymore. That could have been this game, but it wasn't. The 2005 version of the Spartan special teams -- the 5 for 16 field goal crew -- would have easily lost this game. If the 2005 team had attempted the one field goal we had yesterday, then it probably would have been blocked and run back the other way for a TD, causing a 10-point swing from what actually happened. This very thing happened on a pleasant, dry day vs Ohio State in 2005 -- a road game the Spartans ultimately lost by just 11 pts. Yet, playing in the worst weather that they will probably ever face, yesterday's kicking game was better than all 11 outings from the 2005 crew.

All other things being equal, if the Spartans find themselves confronting another "weather game," then this experience and their reaction to it will give them a significant advantage over any group that hasn't been through it yet.

And it says something good about the coaching staff that they appeared to do a fine job of preparing the team for the conditions. The media is full of reports that toward the end of the week, when the weather reports got ugly, the coaches started soaking balls with water before each play during practice. That's neato and all, but a wet football being tossed around a dry, windless practice facility, hardly begins to approximate what actually happened. You can't prepare for that kind of game. If your team does well in it, then it's because they are just very well prepared... period.

Otherwise... Though FAU is supposed to have a good passing game and an NFL quality QB, throwing the ball was little more than a comical diversion for both teams on Saturday. And it often seemed as if both the rain and the wind cranked up several notches whenever FAU got the ball. (Those watching on TV could probably make out the roar of what little crowd there was whenever this happened.) Michigan State won because they did a better job of beating the weather, not the opposition. On a sunny, dry, 50 degree day in November, these two teams play a completely different game and I still don't know what the scoreboard would look like at the end.