I didn’t get a chance to see the game yesterday, though this article, “Ringer leads Michigan St. to 42-10 victory,” suggests I didn’t miss much as an EMU fan. Here’s a quote from the article:
The Eagles managed an 80-yard touchdown drive to tie the game at 7 early in the second quarter, capped by quarterback Andy Schmitt’s 3-yard TD run. But the Spartans responded with 35 unanswered points.
Michigan State of the Big Ten owns a 37-6-2 record against current members of the Mid-American Conference. The Spartans have won 15 straight against MAC teams since stumbling twice against Central Michigan in the early 1990s.
Eastern Michigan (1-1), which hasn’t had a winning season since 1995, is 0-24 all-time against Big Ten teams.
Any silver lining out there, emu fans?
One of the silver linings is that very few EMU students are deeply attached to EMU football or basketball. They are largely irrelevant to the life of the campus. So loses like this don’t count for much in the life of nearly all students or staff. Winning a football game is fine and good, but i doubt most EMU students would even bother to give that achievement more than a moment’s thought. And there is zero potential for EMU athletics, no matter its win-lose record, to ever be financially self supporting. That said, i mean to take nothing away from the many hundreds of devoted, active Eagle fans and EMU athletes. They comprise a nice little sub-community of the EMU population, and they are filled with passion. Go Eagles! There’s always next week.
For those who attended the first two games, like me, the following could have been observed:
1) First home game v ISU – Larger “actual” crowd than any game last season;
2) LARGE student section at the ISU game. Impressive since it was held two days before the freshmen arrived on campus;
3) The number of students who called EMU to see if they could move in early in order to attend the first game;
4) The number of college aged EMU fans wearing EMU apparel at the MSU game;
5) MSU star RB Javon Ringer may have scored 5 touchdowns but it was by him getting 138 yds on 34 carries for a 4.0 avg. His longest run was 13 yds. A very good day, but hardly record yardage per carry;
6) Compare the yards gained between EMU and MSU. EMU – 342, MSU – 418
EMU has a home game this Saturday versus Toledo. It will be the first home game of the season. I will be there. Will you? Here is a link about the upcoming game: http://www.emueagles.com/News/football/2008/9/8/ToledoNotes090808.asp?path=football
Here is a link to the Facebook page for the EMU Football team: The number of fans has had a nice bounce since Saturday: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eastern-Michigan-University-EMU-Football/23705325827?ref=ts
Go Eastern! Beat Toledo!