How bad is Big Ten officiating that Athlon Sports wrote an article during the 1st Quarter of USC-UM game?

They spot the offsides and delay the game misses, but after the article was posted early in the game, many more blown calls happened, each one in favor of the Wolverines. But the most egregious might have been on the winning TD run: Holding on the Tight End No. 83


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Prior to Saturday's game at Boston College, I said that MSU was playing with house money. I said that fans should not be too upset no matter what happened. I still feel that way.

What I expected to happen was that MSU was going to be a bit over-matched by a borderline top-25 team on the road in an emotional night game. But that is not exactly what we saw.

For large stretches of Saturday night's game, MSU was the better team. The box score proves that. To their credit, Boston College had a few explosive, game changing plays that won the game. But BC did not really beat MSU. The Spartans beat themselves.

Now, this could be taken in a couple of ways. Sometimes beating themselves is a hallmark of a bad team and a bad program. But I don't think that is what we are seeing either. As my 80s-sitcom inspired title suggests, I think that we are just experiencing the growing pains of the new era of Spartan football with a very young quarterback at the helm. There is no doubt in my mind that we are watching a much better coached team than we have seen in EL is a while. In the long run (and possibly in the short run) that is going to pay dividends.

Winning on the box score but losing on the score board is not ideal. Just ask those losers from Southern California (thanks for nothing, JERKS). But at the end of the day, I would rather have a program with a young quarterback who is making correctable mistakes than a program with a quarterback who completed seven passes for 32 yards in an entire game, just to give a random example. As a better predictor of future success, I will go with the guy in Green and White who made a couple of mistakes, even if they were costly.

Check out all my thoughts on the action from Week Four:

The Spartans are surprising on the recruiting trail this fall according to Rivals' national recruiting analyst @Greg Smith