Connor Cook puts his remarkable Michigan State career on the line vs. Alabama

If the oddsmakers are right, Connor Cook is about to quarterback his last college game.

His Michigan State Spartans are considerable underdogs in the Cotton Bowl semifinal of the College Football Playoff, expected to lose by about 10 points to Alabama. Just like they were underdogs in October against Michigan, in November against Ohio State and even in last year’s Cotton Bowl against Baylor.

Cook won those games and almost every other he’s played at Michigan State. When Cook starts, as he has for three years, the Spartans are 34-4.

“Everyone keeps telling me congratulations,” Cook told Mitch Albom in an introspective interview last week. “But usually when someone says congratulations, you feel happy. I feel sad.”

Michigan State fans should feel sad, too. Because whether Cook’s run in East Lansing ends with a Playoff championship or a semifinal loss to Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide, it will mean the end of a three-year stretch of understated but ceaseless brilliance.

Cook was a middling three-star recruit out of Stow, Ohio, in 2010. In light of that, it’s easy to see his sparkling record at Michigan State and assume he’s a product of Mark Dantonio’s risk-averse system and a consistently strong defense.

If that’s true, Dantonio’s installed one hell of a system.

Cook is sort of a weird case, in that he hasn’t gotten significantly better, statistically, over three years. He won a Rose Bowl in the 2013 season, his first as the starter, with numbers that would’ve set him on course for an outrageously prolific career if they’d kept growing year over year. That happened to some extent in his Cotton Bowl-winning 2014, but Cook statistically stagnated this year. He was just himself.

And all he’s done this year is slay (with help from his friends) Michigan and unbeaten Ohio State and Iowa, getting to the Playoff by leading the most epic drive in recent college football memory. For Cook at Michigan State, it’s par for the course.

Depending on one’s view of Indiana’s Nate Sudfeld and Ohio State’s J.T. Barrett, there’s a case that Cook was never the Big Ten’s best quarterback, not even for a day. But he’s been a stalwart near the top of the league’s quarterback leaderboards for three seasons now, and even if he never sped up that much, he’s showing few signs of slowing down.

Michigan State may well lose to Alabama. Or it might not. Either way, Cook is off to the NFL soon, where he could have familiar success. He’ll leave college as Michigan State’s winningest quarterback ever and one of the most consistently sturdy college arms of this decade. The Spartans have been lucky to have him.