CHICAGO — OK, so we can’t prove this. But you can trust our estimate that, over two days in which the coach and three players from each Big Ten school met with the media, the name Taylor Martinez was spoken 10 times more than the name Kirk Cousins.
And Nebraska’s quarterback — unlike Cousins, his counterpart from Michigan State — wasn’t even here.
Kirk Cousins isn't the most hyped quarterback in the Big Ten, but his Michigan State teammates say he is the best. (AP Photo)
There was an even greater divide between the amount of media attention the two teams received on the whole. “Just life for Michigan State,” junior running back Edwin Baker called it.
Quickly now, without looking it up: How many games did Cousins, Baker and company win last season?
Time’s up: 11.
Is it coming back to you now — how a three-way tie atop the Big Ten left MSU, and only MSU, out in the cold while Wisconsin went to the Rose Bowl and Ohio State to the Sugar?
Sparty can’t get no respect.
The excitement about Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten is entirely warranted. But what about the fact that, in a recent (Cleveland) Plain Dealer preseason poll of writers covering the conference, 19 of 24 first-place votes in the brand-new Legends Division went to the Huskers, who were 10-4 in 2010? The Spartans, meanwhile, coming off an 11-2 campaign, received four first-place votes.
That’s not warranted. That’s crazy.
“I guess we still have some work to do this year,” said senior safety Trenton Robinson.
The work actually started last December, with the official word that one Big Ten co-champ would head to Pasadena, one to New Orleans and one back to the land of “thanks for playing, see you next year.”
“You climb one mountain, you think you’re getting to the top of the mountain, and then you find out there’s another mountain to climb as well,” is how Spartans coach Mark Dantonio described it.
The work only got harder following an embarrassing 49-7 loss to Alabama in the Capital One Bowl. Maybe that’s why all those writers picked MSU for second place in the division this season.
(This is where we point out that that Nebraska’s 19-7 loss to Washington in the Holiday Bowl was every bit as pathetic, and maybe more so.)
“We’re a good football team,” Robinson said, “but we’ve got to finish off this year. Nationally, I think people are like, ‘They come, they play hard football.’ But we’ve got to win a bowl game. This team has a lot of work to do to become an Alabama, you know?”
No player knows that better than Cousins, who has a few mountains to move himself, it seems, before most folks will be ready to put him in the same paragraph as Michigan’s Denard Robinson, Northwestern’s Dan Persa and even league newcomers Russell Wilson of Wisconsin and Martinez.
Here’s what Cousins is right now: the best pure pocket passer of that group.
He’s also a guy with nearly every offensive skill player from a year ago back alongside him. A Dantonio team is going to run the ball — a lot. But Cousins has a chance at a huge season anyway.
“There’s always someone who’s more marketable than another person,” Baker said. “Denard Robinson and some of the other quarterbacks in this conference may be more marketable than Kirk Cousins. But Kirk Cousins is the best quarterback.”
If he lives up to that, terrific. If not, oh well. It’s entirely beyond the point, according to Cousins. “Whether I’m the worst quarterback in the Big Ten or the best,” he said, “if we’re winning football games I’m a happy quarterback.”
That may be where Michigan State has an edge over Nebraska, Michigan and the rest of the Legends division. So many more eyes will be on Martinez and the Huskers in their debut Big Ten season, and on Robinson and Michigan as they attempt to improve under new coach Brady Hoke. By comparison, the pressure on Cousins and Michigan State will be — just estimating here — maybe one-tenth as great?
“(Cousins) brings a calm and confidence to our football team,” Dantonio said. “He’s got great game-management skills. Maybe more importantly, he has great locker room management.
“We have great team chemistry in our locker room right now. We have very good players coming back, but if you had to ask me what’s the strength of our team this year, it’s the chemistry as a group of people, a belief as a group of people, that propels us.”
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