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Michigan State football: Is media’s 5th-place Big Ten East projection fair?

By Connor Muldowney

EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN - OCTOBER 08: Head coach Mel Tucker of the Michigan State Spartans leads his team onto the field to play the Ohio State Buckeyes at Spartan Stadium on October 08, 2022 in East Lansing, Michigan. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN - OCTOBER 08: Head coach Mel Tucker of the Michigan State Spartans leads his team onto the field to play the Ohio State Buckeyes at Spartan Stadium on October 08, 2022 in East Lansing, Michigan. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images) /
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Big Ten Media Days are finally here and that means the Michigan State football season is just weeks away. This is the point in the summer when football finally feels close.

Mel Tucker and the Spartans are hoping to prove that the 2022 season was an outlier and get back to the 2021 ways when they won 11 games including a New Year’s Six bowl. They will surely be fielding plenty of questions about what went wrong last season at media days.

But before anyone travels to Indianapolis for the event, cleveland.com released its annual preseason Big Ten Media poll. And Michigan State got no respect after going 5-7.

The poll has Michigan State finishing fifth in the Big Ten East behind Michigan, Ohio State, and Maryland and ahead of Rutgers and Indiana.

Not a great place to be, but MSU fans know that when expectations are lacking, the Spartans usually rise to the occasion (see: 2021).

However, is this fair?

Is Michigan State football’s projection fair?

Coming off a poor season that ended with no bowl berth thanks to a meltdown at home against Indiana, Michigan State probably doesn’t deserve a ton of respect. Losing its starting quarterback and top two receivers from a year ago doesn’t help the perception of the Spartans.

But I think this is right where Tucker and Co. want to be. No, they don’t want to finish fifth, but getting overlooked is probably just fine with them.

This is where this program thrives.

Plus there are a lot of unknowns that prove that this projection is pretty fair. Michigan State will be breaking in a new quarterback, new receivers, a relatively new backfield, and the defense was mediocre, at best, last season. Both coordinators find themselves on the hot seat. But the trenches might just save the season.

Michigan State’s offensive and defensive lines should be strengths this season and usually when that’s the case, the team fares well.

Will it benefit the Spartans this year? We’ll soon find out. But the media doesn’t believe so. Let’s hope they’re wrong.

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