I come from a family of Spartans. I am the 18th person from my family to attend and ultimately graduate from this institution. My family moved to North Carolina from Rochester Hills when I was five, but Michigan State and I kept up the long distance relationship. I am in love with Michigan State University.
I love our football team. The drive back from Indianapolis on this rainy Sunday in December was slightly less than four hours. It felt like 22 years. After the fateful penalty by Isaiah Lewis yesterday which eventually led to a Wisconsin first down and sprayed weed killer on our dreams of roses, I felt similar to the rest of the MSU fans in attendance: shocked, confused, angry, hungover, but most of all, utter sadness that almost brought me to tears. I think the majority of Spartans in attendance thought that if we got the ball back, we were going to win the game. That's just the way things went this year for us. It's been an amazing year.
Does it feel like the football season is over despite our bowl game left to play? Yes.
Should it? I don't think so.
We have been here before. We have felt the way we feel today before. I have been alive for 22 years and I feel like some of these Spartan games I have watched should have been used by President Bush to torture Al Qaeda instead of waterboarding. My freshmen year, the devastating "Little Brother" loss. Up by 10 with seven minutes left until Chad Henne and Mario Manningham took over and eventually put us away. Coach D kept us fired up however: "Pride comes before the fall" (cough four in a row). The Notre Dame game in 2006 when we were up by 16 going into the 4th quarter but failed to get the big plays when we needed then and lost by three. I remember I felt like I choked, and I was watching on TV. Those are the two big football losses for me in my short time on Earth that stand out way above the rest of them. I loved them then, too.
I bring up these losses to prove a point however. We are all madly in love with our Spartans. A girl tweeted at @SpartanProblems earlier and I thought it was perfect for what I was going to try and describe: being a spartan is like a relationship: you go from hopeful, to so happy, to heartbroken in like an hour. Couldn't agree more.
If you were dating the MSU football team, all of your friends would be telling you that you don't need to date this (insert gender-appropriate expletive). He/she is an asshole. He/she is a LOSER. You don't have to take this kind of beating. You love 'em anyway. You see the things that others don't. No matter how sad or pissed off they make you, deep down you are crazily in love.
Our recruiting classes never are ranked near the top 10, yet for the last few years thats where our TEAM has been ranked. Our players are never in consideration for the Heisman Trophy, but this year our entire starting defense was named either first, second, or honorable mention All-Big Ten. Our players get dumb penalties because they are playing too hard or they hate our enemies just as much as us fans do. I think a lot of us feel the same way Will Gholston feels about Denard and Michigan. Our players exceed expectations. Our coach's weekly press conferences aren't always replayed on SportsCenter, but even after last night, in our last 26 games, Mark is 21-5. Best in the B1G. We don't get the kind of attention we want and probably deserve, but maybe thats the way we like it. We love them and we brag to each other, and we stick up for our own. We defend our own.
The main point is, the relationship we have with our teams is like the relationships we have with our family members. We do weird traditional things that other teams and fans don't understand. We tell stories about our team that no one else could possibly tell because they can't relate. Our teams are like family because sometimes they surprise us, but sometimes they let us down. They piss us all off and frustrate us beyond belief, but just when you think there is no hope, Keith Nichol catches a prayer of BJ Cunningham's dome and we reach Nirvana. We have fans that didn't graduate from here, and maybe some of those fans shop or work at Wal-Mart, but our fans certainly don't root for us because its the sexy thing to do or because we always win. They just feel the love. We love our teams and they love us right back. We'll smell the roses soon enough.
Go Green. Forever.
