Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt.

PUNT

By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

Are you better off than you were thirteen years ago?

Spartan fans were never happy with losing, of course. But they had developed a tolerance to it. Of the eight coaching regimes after Biggie Munn retired in 1953, not a single Michigan State head coach won over 61% of their games. That was the mark set by the hallowed Duffy Daugherty, who, despite fielding a few of the best teams in college football history, turned in a final six seasons at 27-34-1. The beloved George Perles? A half-game over .500 (68-67-4). Nick Freeking Saban? A shade under 59%, winning more than seven games exactly once in five seasons (at which point he immediately bailed). The two generations between Biggie and Grumpy saw Sparty win a total of 54% of their games. Three Rose Bowls in 53 years. A half-century of mediocrity will find its way into your psyche, and there’s no shame in that.

I kid you not, this was the Sparty costume... for thirty-four years.

No, it isn’t losing that scares Sparty. The thing that scared Michigan State fans more than anything is the specter of John L. Smith. Smith’s record was bad, but not terribly out of line with his predecessors. The real problem was that his teams were embarrassing. And while no one likes being laughed at, it hits especially hard when you suffer from an inferiority complex.

Smith’s teams lost by huge margins: by 35 to Iowa, by 35 to Northwestern, by 34 to Minnesota, by 31 to Ohio State, by 25 to Indiana, and by 24 to Penn State. They blew un-blowable leads, like a 12-point lead in the last 75 seconds against Louisiana Tech, a 17-point lead in the last 8 minutes against Michigan, and a 17-point lead (by choking on apple sauce, legend says) against Notre Dame. They put the wrong number of players on the field for a field goal because they screwed up the clock, essentially costing them a game against Ohio State. Recruiting became a joke. The coach himself made an ass of himself in press conferences. And they lost to Michigan. Oh, how they lost to Michigan.

What did the five fingers say to the guy who’s about to get fired?

Mark Dantonio changed all that. Sure, he won games. Which was great. But more importantly, he salved the wounds on their sensitive souls. He relabeled the laughter as “disrespect,” and channeled it directly into the engine of the machine he was building. No longer did fans have to hide from criticism. They could practically encourage it. They felt it made the team stronger.

That’s how you build a cult of personality. You convince people that applause, criticism, and outright neglect are all signs that things are working. It’s how you can get a Glenn Winston, a Donnie Corley, a Josh King, and Demetric Vance, an Austin Robertson, a Curtis Blackwell, a Delton Williams, a Chris L Rucker, a Demetrius Cooper, an LJ Scott, a Demetrious Cox, a MacGarrett Kings, a Jon Reschke, a Max Bullough, and a Joe Bachie. It’s how you can let Will Gholston play after he practiced some MMA mid-game, let Will Gholston play after he was knocked unconscious, or let Brian Lewerke play after getting knocked half-unconscious, then make three contradictory statements about it.

[After THE JUMP: Throw out the records (that's legal right?)]

For years, winning was proof that however things appeared, the Dantonio Way was correct. And in recent years, the “they’re doing things the Dantonio Way” was sufficient evidence that the winning would return. No one could know how the magic man weaved all of the individual strands of good and bad into a successful program, but it was practically heresy to suggest he couldn’t—or shouldn’t—continue to do so. It was Bismarckian diplomacy with quarters defense. He’d get things right. Just watch. #SpartansWill.

But those threads are unwinding. In the last four years, Dantonio’s teams have lost by huge margins: by 45 to Ohio State, by 38 to Wisconsin, by 33 to Penn State, by 24 to Wisconsin, by 24 to Ohio State, by 21 to Penn State, by 20 to Notre Dame, by 20 to Ohio State, and by 17 to BYU. They put the wrong number of players on the field for a field goal because they screwed up clock management, essentially costing them a game against Arizona State. Recruiting is quickly becoming a joke. Dantonio is getting snippy (well, snippier than usual) in press conferences. They just blew an un-blowable lead to Illinois. And worst of all, people are laughing again, and Dantonio can’t seem to convert it to fuel anymore.

Fuller

Beating Michigan is the one thing left separating John L. Smith’s teams from Mark Dantonio’s. Michigan State covered the spread an amazing ten consecutive years from 2008 through 2017, and won eight of those games outright (four of them as an underdog). They are 2-2 against Antichrist Jim Harbaugh. So the specter of losing—and possibly getting whalloped in—a third game in four years is unnerving to the point of mania.

It’s the lynchpin of the whole thing, really. And to be honest, it isn’t crazy to think that beating Michigan itself might be enough. After all, if you had offered Michigan State fans the option of “perpetually 7-6, but you regularly beat Michigan” in 2006, they might have signed that deal.

But this isn’t 2006, and you can’t revert from a Cult of Personality to a regular ol’ book club that meets every Saturday. The program was built around an aura, and once you shatter that aura, it’s over. And if there is one thing worse than realizing you aren’t what you hoped you would become, it is succumbing to the fact that you might just be what you’d always suspected.

John L. Smith was 22-26 in his four years at Michigan State. A loss Saturday would put Michigan State at 24-26 over their last 50 games. So, I guess my best advice to Spartan fans: SMILE.

Michigan 34, Michigan State 12.

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COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

It’s Michigan-MSU and, as much as I detest clichés, this is a game in which one truly has to “throw out the records,” especially in the case of Curtis Blackwell, Demetrius Cooper, Donnie Corley, Demetrious Cox, Josh King, Auston Robertson, Chris Rucker, LJ Scott, Demetric Vance, and Delton Williams.

MSU is staggering into today’s game like a punch-drunk boxer whose cornerman is, well, the MSU football medical staff. The Spartans are 4-5 and are still reeling from a historic collapse against Illinois, where their 28-3 lead was yanked away from them like a facemask in the grips of William Gholston. These Spartans appear to be going in completely the wrong direction and I don’t just mean LJ Scott on I-96. But if there’s anything that can give the green and white a shot in the arm, it’s Joe Bachie’s trainer. And if there’s anything else that can, it’s the Michigan game, a rivalry that for the last decade-plus has acted as the Uranium-235 fuel rods powering Mark Dantonio’s radioactive Disrespekt Power Plant. And while that plant has indeed powered the Dantonio-led Spartans to an overall 8-4 record against Michigan, it has become increasingly apparent that East Lansing’s Chernobyl is teetering on the edge of a full-on existential meltdown.

Radioactive Disrespekt

It is far too easy to fall in the trap of hyperbolizing the importance of any one game, to ascribe it some heightened level of importance to fit the fleeting Narrative of the day. But I have an unshakable feeling that this particular chapter of the Michigan-MSU rivalry just feels different. Unmistakable cracks have besieged the foundations of the once invincible, immutable reign of Mark Dantonio and are becoming wider and deeper with every loss. Fueled by multiple seasons of frustrating choke-jobs, lackluster recruiting, and completely inept offensive coaching, all signs are pointing towards the end of the Dantonio Era. If the Wolverines deliver the beatdown that fans on both sides appear to be preparing for, we may very well finally see Joe Bolden’s wooden stake be driven into that vampiric ghoul stalking the sidelines in East Lansing.

I’d drive it through his heart if he had one

Oh God, I want this to be a beat down. I want Michigan to step on the necks of the Spartans. I want Michigan to embarrass MSU so bad that the scowling lunatic who adopted as his rallying cry the phrase “pride comes before the fall” falls so hard that his own ass creates a bigger divot than Devin Bush Jr.’s cleats. I want Michigan to run up the score so much that Chris Vannini is forced into tweeting about the Man of Steel DVD Extended Cut by the fourth quarter. I want this. Bad.

And it’s because I want this, I know it won’t happen. Therein lies the dark, twisted magic of Mark Dantonio. When you think he’s down, when you think he’s out, when you think he has finally been conquered—that is precisely when he lurches his way back to life, like a bad guy in a 1980s action movie theatrically gasping for air after being shot over 100 times just to take one final swing at the hero.

But if you remember your clichés you know how it ends: a bullet fires, the evil thing goes down, and the smoke clears to reveal the source of this timely assist, because somewhere along the way the hero made many friends, and the antagonist has none.

Michigan 21, Michigan State 20.