Michigan overcame these 7 omens to beat Michigan State

No. 6 Michigan beat No. 24 Michigan State on Saturday in East Lansing, 21-7. The Wolverines kept themselves in the thick of College Football Playoff contention, a week after the Spartans knocked Penn State out of that same race in Happy Valley.

The win’s important in the Big Ten standings, where Michigan’s still tracking toward a showdown with Ohio State. It’s also important for the collective psyche of the Michigan fanbase, because the Wolverines won despite facing several critical omens that would normally predict MSU is about to beat Michigan — as the Spartans have so often done.

Michigan was the unanimous pick on College GameDay. The Vegas point spread at game time was anything from 7 to 8, depending on where you were placing your bet.

This was the eighth time since Mark Dantonio’s arrival at MSU in 2007 that the Wolverines were favored to beat the Spartans. Of the seven previous times, four turned into Michigan State victories. (Michigan’s never upset Michigan State in the years the Dantonio Spartans have been favored to win.)

This is one of the four keys to a generic Michigan State upset. The game was delayed due to lightning for about 80 minutes in the first quarter, then was played on a sloppy field.

In 2017, weather was a factor in MSU’s win in Ann Arbor. It was fitting — and for UM fans, scary — that this weather has visited East Lansing on this of all Saturdays. Given Michigan’s dangerous passing offense, bad weather favored the Spartans, but UM won anyway.

There was October snow, and in the second half, there was hail.

A horrible, horrible omen, set in stone by Michigan State’s shocking win on a botched punt snap at the end of the teams’ 2015 game.

The Wolverines’ usually solid kicker, Quinn Nordin, missed a 36-yard field goal. He totally shanked it, kicking something that looked like a knuckleball and twisted wide left.

Later, the Spartans’ Tyler Hunt turned a bad long snap into an incredible one-handed catch and a 60-yard punt down the right sideline:

Instead of a safety for Michigan, the Wolverines got the ball at their own 18.

Yet Michigan didn’t seem that frustrated, despite repeatedly squandering good field position in the first half.

In upsetting Penn State, the Spartans used a devilish fake punt to set up one scoring drive. Dantonio’s long had weird tricks up his sleeves against elite opponents.

And on Saturday, Michigan State pulled off a QB touchdown reception:

The Wolverines had lost their last 17 games in such circumstances, an embarrassing streak that went back to their close loss to Troy Smith’s Ohio State in 2006.

Yet another bad omen.

Before the game, Michigan State took its customary pregame walk across its home field, with pretty much the entire team linking arms. Some Michigan players were on the field warming up at this point, and a few of them just opted to not move:

The Spartans’ walk continued mostly unabated, but not without drama:

Michigan linebacker Devin Bush relentlessly kicked the Spartan logo at midfield, dragging his spikes across it to rip out grass:

The Wolverines have longstanding issues with the field at this stadium. In 2014, they jammed a spike into the ground there before the game.

Dantonio later had his players run up the score in MSU’s 35-11 win. Then he criticized Brady Hoke’s program after the game.

When 2018’s game started, it started hot:

When it was all over, look where Michigan celebrated:

Harbaugh and Dantonio had this exchange in 2017:

Michigan got a better bowl placement, which was questionable, given that the Spartans had a better record and also won head-to-head. So, Dantonio said:

To which Harbaugh said:

To which Dantonio said this ...

... which was a reference to this comment from his first year in East Lansing, before he commenced a decade of regularly beating Michigan:

The Wolverines even covered a touchdown spread.