Cotton Bowl Recap: An Alabama Ass Whuppin’ and A Season in Review

 

I’ve been sitting for a week stewing about the outcome of the Cotton Bowl (Alabama 38, Michigan State 0), which could be charitably described as an Alabama Ass Whuppin’ (to steal a phrase from the Drive-By Truckers). It’s one of those games that is better not to dwell on too much, or else you start to think that things like T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” are relevant to your circumstance:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper

The gunpowder plot, World War 1, the H Bomb, getting curb stomped by Nick Saban. These are all basically the same thing (or at least, the temptation exists to believe that they are).

Make the Big Ten Great Again

The Big Ten has been roundly mocked year after year for being a soft conference, a conference of pretenders. Last year’s bowl victories and National Championship did little to dispel that notion. One great postseason, it seems, does not a conference reputation make.

There’s No Crying In Football

The band came thundering out of the tunnel to a steady drum pattern, kick stepping the whole way. The stadium was rowdy as always, subdued only a little by the cold and the lower attendance thanks to the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Under a crystal blue sky on a blustery day in late November, I tried to hold myself together during my final football game as a student at Michigan State University.

It was my final game in the student section, my final game watching this team I had loved for four seasons play at home. A good number of seniors took their final snaps in Spartan Stadium yesterday during a win over the Minnesota Golden Gophers that made this the third season in four years that the Spartans were undefeated at home.