Out of whose league?

2015 marked a miraculous year for the Michigan State football team as well as the B1G conference as a whole.

But the SEC came out on top yet again.

Throughout the season, there was no team in college football that had as many critics as Michigan State. And sure enough, following MSU’s heartbreaking blowout defeat at the hand of the future National Champion Alabama Sooners, the critics reared their ugly heads for one final New Year’s taunt. One in particular came from former Alabama coach Gene Stallings.

“I felt like six to eight teams in the Southeastern Conference could beat Michigan State.”

Now let’s imagine for a minute that this statement isn’t the perfect example of the moronic, falsely pompous, and blatantly imbecilic opinions of “SEC nation.” Let’s that 6 to 8 SEC teams really could have beaten MSU, and the Spartans were out of their league going into the CFB playoffs. Let’s also say that Jalen Watts-Jackson did not run a muffed punt back for a touchdown as time expired to beat Michigan, Michael Geiger did not kick a game winning field goal to snap the 23 game winning streak of Ohio State, and L.J. Scott failed to power through a half dozen defensemen and reach the goal line to give MSU their second B1G Championship in three years, this time over an undefeated Iowa.

Now snap out of it.

To more efficiently explain the craziness of “SEC nation” we must look at the curious plight of Les Miles, head coach. Thus far, in his 11 years of coaching, he has brought the Tigers 11 bowl appearances, one national championship, four FBS top 5 rankings, and in week 10, the number two ranked team in the nation. And after his team took a turn for the worst, losing to Alabama, Arkansas, and Ole Miss, in consecutive weeks, as if in some sort of desperate SEC plea for attention, the LSU Athletic Director slapped a “help wanted” sign on the door of Miles’s office. While short-lived, Miles’s plight did indeed happen, which is unbelievable in itself.

Through the whole SEC “alpha-male” illusion that the Southerners so desperately try to protect, we know otherwise. They’re scared. While the “Les Miles Scare of ’15” was taking place, the directors of the SEC conference were so busy wetting themselves that they dismissed the fact that the B1G was slowly inching themselves up to near-elite status. Although this status was short-lived, as seen in Alabama’s New Year’s Eve blowout, the Michigan State, Iowa, Ohio State (sorry guys), and Michigan (I know just bear with me) football programs undoubtedly crossed a threshold this year. And in what will later be known to SEC nation as “The Great B1G Uprising of 2015,” the future of the conference took a turn for the best.

The moral of the story is this. As it adheres to college football, there is no room in this crazy sport for what could have or should have been. To those who lie above and below the Mason-Dixon Line, for better or for worse, we are truly different from one another. A football will always sit somewhere in the middle of Michigan and Florida. And though the SEC won the race to the pigskin this year, the B1G conference made a valiant effort.

In the words of the always optimistic against all odds Sparty nation: “…until next year.”