Larry Brown Sports

Nebraska beat Michigan State 28-24 on Saturday after getting a break on a pass interference call that had the Spartans players fuming after the game.

Michigan State was up 24-21 in the final minute and had the Cornhuskers in a 3rd-and-10 situation at the 20. That’s when the Spartans were flagged for a b.s. pass interference call that had our buddy World of Isaac (who provided the GIF below) up in arms:

Thanks to the b.s. penalty, Nebraska had a first-and-goal situation from the five. They scored two plays later to win 28-24.

Naturally, Michigan State players were fuming on Twitter over the call. Le’Veon Bell, who had 188 yards and two touchdowns, took the refs to task. He sent the tweets below that have since been deleted.

Read The Rest of the Story…

Two days after being accused of doctoring game film sent to their opponent, Ohio State coach Urban Meyer responded by sending the Big Ten a complaint video of his own.

The Detroit Free Press reported that Meyer said at his Monday press conference that he sent video to the conference of a Michigan State player allegedly gouging one of his players in the eye.

Buckeyes defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins is at the bottom of a pile and appears to have his eyes poked by either Travis Jackson or Jack Allen of Michigan State.

Here’s video of the incident in question:

Deadspin has a much higher quality video if you care to take another look.

Meyer is no stranger to eye gouging incidents. In 2009, one of his linebackers at Florida, Brandon Spikes, was caught on video poking Georgia’s Washaun Ealey.

“I don’t condone that,” Meyer said at the time. “I understand what goes on on the football [field], but there’s no place for that. We’re going to suspend Brandon for the first half of the Vanderbilt game. I spoke with him. That’s not who he is. That’s not who we are. He got caught up in emotion.”

Maybe Mark Dantonio should follow Meyer’s lead and suspend his player for a half. It’s also worth noting that this is the second time in a two years that a Michigan State player was caught eye gouging.

Helmet smack to College Football Talk

After Michigan State lost at home to Ohio State 17-16 on Saturday, the Spartans reportedly called into question the Buckeyes’ gamesmanship during the week leading up to the game.

While speaking outside the Michigan State locker room after the game, MSU defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi said, “We had tape cut off all week, where they changed the tape, I’m not gonna lie to you,” according to the Detroit Free Press. “They send you tape and they’ve got it all cut off and you don’t get to see shifts or motions or anything else.”

The Big Ten requires teams to provide conference opponents with film of all their games as shot by the team’s video staff. According to the report, Michigan State did not get full game film of Ohio State until Thursday and was forced to go to nonconference teams who played Ohio State for more film.

“A few other teams we talked to that they played, and we compared what they were looking at on tape to what we were looking at,” Narduzzi reportedly continued. “We’re like, ‘We don’t see any of that. We see it on their tape but not on our tape.’ So that’s something I’m sure the Big Ten office will hopefully take care of.”

Though Narduzzi indicated to the Free Press that Michigan State had filed a complaint against the Buckeyes with the conference, the paper reported that the schools’ athletic directors worked out the issue without Big Ten intervention.

First-year Ohio State coach Urban Meyer denied knowledge of the alleged doctored tapes.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Meyer reportedly said after his press conference. “I don’t handle the video. What are they saying?

“There is no video issue here,” Meyer reportedly told the Free Press.

Meyer, who won two national championships with Florida, is no stranger to controversy with his fellow Big Ten coaches. He rubbed some of them the wrong way when he got recruits to flip their commitments from opposing schools on National Signing Day.

Photo Credit: Greg Bartram-US PRESSWIRE

Michigan State kicked off its season on a positive note Friday night with a victory over No. 24 Boise State. Denard Robinson and company were not as fortunate on Saturday night as they were completely dominated by Alabama in all phases of the game. Most of us expected the Tide to be too much for Michigan, but the 41-14 loss made the Wolverines look undeserving of their top-10 preseason ranking.

Not surprisingly, the Michigan State players seemed to enjoy every second of Michigan’s rough evening. Many of them took to Twitter to rip Robinson  with a series of tweets that have since been deleted but were captured by MLive.com.

“Is this guy really a QB I’ll say my mans (walk-on Tommy Vento) is a better QB lol,” Linebacker Denicos Allen wrote. “S/O to my boy Vento by the way.”

“DENARD IS SOOOO BAD!” safety Kyle Artinian added. “And it makes me feel so good.”

“I can play quarterback for the school in blue,” Linebacker Jamal Lyles tweeted. “(Le’Veon Bell) for Heisman.”

As you may have seen, MSU running back Le’Veon Bell received an amazing 50 touches during the Spartans win over Boise State — including 44 rushing attempts for 210 yards. Robinson, who many believe is a strong Heisman Trophy candidate this season, completed only 11-of-26 passes for 200 yards and threw two interceptions. He ran the ball only 10 times for 27 yards and added a rushing touchdown.

Since it is so early in the year, we can’t really tell if the blowout loss Michigan suffered indicates that they are overrated or shows just how dominant Alabama will be again this season. In any event, Robinson shouldn’t needed any added motivation when taking on MSU in October. Clearly his rivals have very little respect for him.

Helmet knock to Dr. Saturday

Michigan State beat Wisconsin 37-31 in East Lansing Saturday night thanks to a successful Hail Mary on the last play of the game. Kirk Cousins bombed a pass into the end zone that ended up caught by Keith Nichol who pushed his way to a touchdown. The play was ruled down at the one initially, but after it was reviewed, the Spartans were awarded the touchdown. Here is a video of the miracle play:

Read The Rest of the Story…

There have been few people over the past 13 years or so who can tackle quite like Bobby Boucher. He may have only been the team’s water boy and had no prior football experience, but the guy could hit like a train. Get Boucher pissed off and watch out.

For that reason, it makes sense that a college coach would want to inspire his guys by taking a page out of the coach’s book who groomed Boucher into a tackling machine. Coach Klein advised Bobby to “visualize the attack,” which is exactly what Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio told his players to do during halftime of their 10-7 win over Ohio State last weekend.

After having watched the inspiration film The Waterboy as a team on Friday night, Dantonio gave the advice to his players during the break.  It must have worked, because the next thing you know linebacker Denicos Allen was jumping over a player to sack Ohio State quarterback Joe Bauserman.  Dantonio said the team plans to hang a picture of the play in the MSU football offices and caption it “The Waterboy.”

It is no surprise Boucher was able to motivate the Spartans to come up with a huge win.  He has inspired so many of us since his playing days in the late 90s, and it’s great to see the legend living on throughout college athletics nationwide.

Chest bump to Sports by Brooks Live for the story.

Michigan State entered Saturday’s game at Northwestern ranked 7th in the BCS Standings and first in the Big Ten with a 7-0 record. They had beaten Notre Dame on a crazy fake, taken down Wisconsin at home, and they pummeled Michigan on the road. With a big challenge at Iowa looming, Saturday at Evanston seemed like a trap game for the Spartans.

It certainly turned out that way, yet Michigan State prevailed with an impressive comeback.

The Spartans came back from down 17-0 in the second quarter to win 35-27. They caught a nice break early in the game when Northwestern lost a fumble at the Michigan State one-yard line on its third possession. Kirk Cousins threw a touchdown pass before halftime to get them on the board and they went into the half down 17-7. In the second half, Michigan State’s offense really came alive.

Bennie Fowler scored on a reverse to pull the Spartans within three, but then they allowed another touchdown going down by 10. Michigan State reached into its bag of tricks again and ran a fake punt to convert a 4th down in Northwestern territory and they scored a touchdown right after that. Yet again, a fake on a special teams play gave them a huge lift. From there, Michigan State’s defense got stops (including a pick to seal the game), and the offense scored two more touchdowns to win it.

Michigan State isn’t blowing teams away and reminds me a lot of Iowa last year in terms of the way they’ve won games. It hasn’t always been pretty, but they keep coming out on top. Now they can turn their full attention to the Hawkeyes.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh