I think when the weather is especially adverse, it’s really hard to get a read on the teams playing in a football game.
The rain was coming down hard in East Lansing today, which had to greatly hinder the hopes of the Florida Atlantic football team’s offense in what I’m sure they had hoped would be a big game for them.
Having watched FAU last year in a bowl game against Memphis, I knew they could move the ball, especially at the hands of quarterback Rusty Smith.
There was no way he was going to be able to pass too much in today’s game conditions.
Hence, all you really got to see was a large program simply overpowering a smaller program. Michigan State had the size and the athletes, allowing them to focus on the running game.
And, when you have a stud like Javon Ringer who will take the ball 42 times and turn those carries into 282 yards and a pair of touchdowns, you really have little motivation to try to pass the ball in weather that demands that you won’t.
That’s about it. FAU didn’t really get a chance to play their game and will have to wait only until next week to try to knock off a Big Ten team when they travel to Minneapolis to face the Golden Gophers where the weather will be no factor in the Homerdome.
They still play at the Homerdome, right?
Anyhow, I did keep thinking that Michigan State should be putting up more numbers on the scoreboard, despite all the snaps that escaped the hands of Spartan quarterback Brian Hoyer. This is a good year to be on the upswing in the Big Ten with Michigan in a shambles and Ohio State showing signs of weakness, but the rest of the conference needs to be sharp if they want to take advantage of the situation. Again, with better weather, who knows how things would have gone, but I definitely got the impression that it caused the Owls more grief than it did the Spartans.
And, to end with a commentator annoyance…
First, I like Ray Bentley as he’s a fellow Central Michigan alum, so that’s that.
However, his partner, Pam Ward pulled one of those broadcaster stunts that just make me want to turn the sound off entirely.
So, Pam, to you I wish to inform you that when a play is called back due to a holding penalty, that’s not a bad break just because the play otherwise went for a touchdown, unless you would consider it a ‘bad break’ that the officials were paying attention. Hence, it’s a little ridiculous to continue to assert that FAU could have been holding a 10-0 lead when the score was 0-0. The touchdown probably doesn’t happen without the hold and the fumbled snap on the field-goal attempt is an execution+weather equation. Leave it for the fans to sit and wonder about ‘what could have been.’
Besides, any little thing that would have happened differently in the game would likely have changed everything else that happened after it. Haven’t we all seen Jurassic Park? Has Jeff Goldblum and his explanation of chaos theory taught us nothing?
So leave the unicorns out of our football please. The 10-0 FAU lead was nothing more than a fantastical bit of imagination and whimsy, so let’s not have that, please.
Thanks.
