MSU Prediction

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I had to travel for work, so that has not left me with a lot of free time. I'm off to South Bend tomorrow afternoon to hopefully take in the pep rally and then go out on the town reliving my college glory days. Then I plan on sleeping maybe 4 hours and then tailgating of course. Oh how I love Notre Dame home football weekends, especially now that we're good. Hopefully I'll post a few photos from the weekend early next week.

As for the game, Michigan State has been been talking a lot of trash this week, most prominently from defensive lineman Clifton Ryan, who said the following:

When we were down there in '03, I went looking for Touchdown Jesus. Once I seen it, I realized it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. You hear about a place, you hear about how it gets amped up; it just wasn't like I had expected.

And based on that statement, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Ryan is not an English major. While not well-spoken, Ryan does have a valid point, Michigan State should be confident coming into this game. They have trounced their two opponents this year (Kent State and Hawaii), and most importantly, they have not lost at Notre Dame Stadium since Lou Holtz was head coach. Sadly I'm not making this up. That being said, Michigan State's recent dominance over Notre Dame ends on Saturday. While Michigan State's offense has been great, their defense remains largely unproven and was flat out bad last year. Both Brady Quinn and Darius Walker should both have big days. In addition, Michigan State has yet to face a defense as talented and as physical as Notre Dame. While Michigan State should be able score some points, they aren't going to put up points and yards anywhere close to what they did in the first two games. The game will be close for a while, but the hard hits of the Notre Dame defense and the precise execution of the Notre Dame offense will wear out Michigan State. Notre Dame pulls away in the second half for a relatively comfortable victory. Notre Dame 45 Michigan State 27