And if JLS had any ability to rebound from a tough loss at all and MSU had played even close to that well in future games, they'd have won at least three more games and been a strong bowl team. But then again, the devil's in the if's. The loss to Notre Dame didn't have that much to do with John L. Smith. That was almost all Stanton. Michigan State a 7 win team? They only looked pretty good against Eastern Michigan at home. That was about it. They then looked either terrible or bad during every single Big Ten game. Michigan State may have played Notre Dame well, but they were not a decent team by any stretch of the imagination. That's the point. They should have been. If you can play that well against ND, why the hell can't you get it up to play well against Illinois, Indiana, etc? That was my point. Shouldn't an entire Big Ten season of play carry more wieght than three quarters in a non-con game? Of course it should. I'm not saying it doesn't. The point is that Michigan State played well against ND, so to say they barely escaped a "crappy" Michigan State team, while technically true, shadows the fact that the Spartans played well enough to win that game.