At Big Ten championship, honoring the old gods and the new
|
Version 0 of 1. The past has returned, as it invariably does. The Big Ten has resumed both college football relevance and prominence. And as it stages the first unofficial play-in game in the brief history of the College Football Playoff, it counts as a triumph for the kind of football that used to define it: hard, disciplined, air tight. Suddenly, after all the gaudy offenses of the 21st century, here are Michigan State and Iowa talking about plugging “gaps” and avoiding being “sideways” and offenses that entail “pounding.” While three other Power Five leagues will stage conference championship games, only the Big Ten will stage a play-in game. No. 4 Iowa (12-0) and No. 5 Michigan State (11-1) will gather for some blocking and tackling in Indianapolis, after which the winner will proceed either to Miami or Arlington, Tex., for a national semifinal. [TV schedule and previews for championship weekend] That team will follow up on the 2014 national championship of Ohio State, notably another Big Ten member, after the league had spent six seasons without a participant in any of the Bowl Championship Series title games. As well, that team will know Ohio State isn’t appearing in this Big Ten championship game because it suffered defeat when it lost the trenches. “Yeah, we lost the line of scrimmage,” Ohio State Coach Urban Meyer said on Nov. 21, after Michigan State went to Columbus and proved the harder side, winning, 17-14, while lacking three-year starting quarterback Connor Cook, whom it won’t lack against Iowa. Indianapolis will see a veritable celebration of the trenches, such that it’s almost a shame the trenches at indoor Lucas Oil Stadium remain incapable of generating mud. Nobody brings much gaudiness even if the Spartans do bring Cook’s largely uncanny accuracy. Iowa showed its ultimate grit in a 10-6 win at Wisconsin on Oct. 3 that announced the Hawkeyes probably would trump their .531 winning percentage of the first half of this decade. Michigan State showed its grit in Columbus. [Iowa must pressure Cook — by stopping Spartans’ running game] Iowa ranks 63rd in the nation in total offense, Michigan State 68th. Iowa ranks 21st in total defense, Michigan State 27th. Michigan State has the stronger résumé, having beaten both participants from the 2014-15 national championship game. Crucially for a match rife with old football language, there are two teams tied for fourth in turnover margin. One is Iowa, at plus-14; the other, Michigan State, also at plus-14. “It’s kind of like I said mid-season or somewhere in there: We’re doing a better job on the takeaways [than the minus-six of 2014], and it’s not like you have a drill for that,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “To me it’s a reflection of just like everything else, we’re doing things a little better right now. Could be positioning, better technique when you’re tackling, breaking on the ball, anticipation, which might be film study.” Iowa has rushed the ball 506 times and posted three 200-yard rushers on various Saturdays, with only eight fumbles to its discredit. Michigan State linebacker Riley Bullough spoke ancient Big Ten dialect when he said: “What they do, they just keep pounding you, kind of like our offense does. Against a team like that, you’ve got to stay disciplined, you’ve got to do your job, you’ve got to stay in your gap every play, because that’s where they hurt people. I feel they kind of lull the other team to sleep and catch them in the wrong gaps and that’s when they gash them for those explosive gains.” [Iowa’s Beathard has the family name back in center of football world] Michigan State Coach Mark Dantonio, whose teams have gone 35-4 across the past three seasons, said: “We are going to have to play square and be in our gap, and we can’t be playing sideways against Iowa, because they’ll split you.” As for the matchup of wits, he said, “We’ve got a seven-year book on these guys; they’ve got a seven-year book on us.” Those books should have a few blood splotches. For this fifth Big Ten championship game — the third involving Michigan State and the first for Iowa — Ferentz saw a philosophical match. “I guess what I’d suggest is there’s a lot of ways to be successful in football,” he said, “and a lot of teams across the country do things with their own personality, and a lot of that plays into where you are and who you are, and I think that’s the most important thing in the whole deal, is know who you are and what you can do to be successful. It just so happens we have two teams that are fairly similar.” Knowing who they are, the fairly similar teams are set to ram into each other, much like the Big Ten the country long knew. |