As a student in college I spent most weekends in the spring and fall traveling around the midwest with the OSU Sailing Team. It was on the way home from one of these weekends that I called my dad who was very concerned about my wellfare.

“Weren’t you in East Lancing this weekend,” his voice rattled over the phone.

“Yeah,” I remember mumbling from a road side rest somewhere in southern Michigan.

“WJR is reporting riots in East Lancing. Are you OK!!”

“Riots,” I said, “Come to think of it, yeah, I guess they were riots.”

Somehow, in my college-age brain, the fact that fact that somebody stole a bulldozer from a construction site and drove it into the middle of about 10,000 drunk college students, or the fact that the next morning, we took a walk around the neighborhood and saw at least one car upside down and a number which had been burned, all just seemed part of another good weekend.

All this and it wasn’t like the football team had won a big game or anything. It was just one of the first nice days of spring.

This brings me to today’s matchup between Ohio State and Michigan State. If you travel around the blogs or listen to the sports commentators, they will all tell you about the famous upset of 1998 or something like that.

What they all fail to forget in this pathetic attempt build drama, is that this famous upset was coached under John Cooper, not Jim Tressel. As I have always said, Cooper’s biggest problem was that he could not his team up mentally for the big games. Likewise, if the team got behind, Cooper crawled into his little cave and the game was over. You can only take talent so far. At a certain level, everyone has the talent. It is the mental aspect that wins or looses games.

At this point in the season, we can see that Michigan State coach John Smith is mental alright. From random face slapping to the glorious defeat to Notre Dame to that outstanding game against Illinois, MSU is done. Even the fans have turned on Smith. All that is left is for the MSU riot team to step up and show the country how burning couches is simply bush league.

From what I understand, the riot team has been training hard and they have a tough road schedule ahead. What, with the Tigers doing so well and all.

All that aside, the bookies are only giving OSU 14 points. Take the spread. Apparently those in Vegas don’t understand Tressel and the nature of a game against Bowling Green. Michigan State is different. At this point in their downward spiral, MSU won’t be able to stop the Buckeye Offense and this is not Notre Dame. We have a defense.

There are times in Ohio State football where it is good to run the scoreboard. First and foremost, any opportunity to humiliate UM is not only accepted, it is expected and failure to do so could lead to the removal of a Buckeye coach.

A chance to bury MSU’s season for good is also one of those times. It’s time to put the upset behind us, get some good highlights for Smith and show the rest of the country that both Florida and Michigan have no right to even think they could sit in the #1 spot.

Final score: OSU 35, Michigan 3