Entering every game, there is a favorite and an underdog. One team expected to win and the other to lose.
For Ohio State, it's usually the former. Most of the time, the Buckeyes play the role of favorite.
But when 16th-ranked Ohio State travels to No. 8 Michigan State on Saturday night, that won't be the case. The Spartans opened as 1.5-point favorites over the Buckeyes, but the line has since shifted to favor Michigan State by 3 or 3.5 points, according to Vegas Insider.
Being the underdog is sort of unfamiliar territory at a place like Ohio State.
“It feels good to be an underdog sometimes because then a lot of people are looking at you and they’re trying to see what you can do in that sort of scenario," junior linebacker Joshua Perry said Monday. "A lot of the training that we do here, you’re in a situation where you either go or you don’t. This is gonna be a good one for us. We’re gonna go back to our training, obviously, with some of that stuff, but like I keep saying, they’re a really good team but I think we’re pretty good right now, too."
The home-field advantage certainly plays into the Spartans' favor, but so does the fact the last time these two teams met — in last year's 2013 Big Ten championship game — it was Michigan State who came away victorious.
The Spartans jumped out to a 17-0 lead in that game, fell behind 24-17, then rallied for a 34-24 win to stop Ohio State's 24-game winning streak and end the Buckeyes' dreams of playing for a national title.
The Spartans were 5.5-point underdogs in that game and upsets happen all the time in college football. Ohio State isn't usually the team trying to pull them, though.
“I think we like it," senior defensive tackle Michael Bennett said. "This team is interesting to me because I think for the first time since I’ve been here — except maybe my sophomore year — guys have really relished being just looked at as overrated or whatever it is. We’re here to prove something, we’re here to show that we’re a complete team and it doesn’t really matter what people rank us."
No matter who it is playing, though, and whether it is favored or not, Michigan State always feels like the underdog. The Spartans like to play with a chip on their shoulder. It's just the way head coach Mark Dantonio runs his program.
"We're never given anything," Michigan State quarterback Connor Cook said Monday. "Everything we achieve is earned."
What they've earned just in the last 12 months are wins in both the Big Ten championship game and the Rose Bowl. They've earned the respect of the national media because they've proven it on the big stage, something the Buckeyes haven't done yet in head coach Urban Meyer's tenure.
"They're the king of the hill right now because they won the championship and you have to dethrone them," Meyer said. "How do you do that? You outwork them Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday."
Michigan State is the team Ohio State needs to beat if it wants to have a chance to win its first Big Ten title under Meyer and on paper, they're going to have to pull an upset to do so.. But do the Buckeyes really feel like they are an underdog?
“I don’t think we’ll ever — being at Ohio State — feel like that," Ohio State junior offensive tackle Taylor Decker said. "We do have a lot of respect for them, they’re a great opponent and they’ve had a really great year. Yeah, they’re ranked higher than us and everything but I don’t think we’re ever gonna feel like the underdog."
"We always feel like if we’re prepared and if we have the better team and the better players and better coaches then we’ll always pull it out," Decker added. "We do have a lot of respect for them and I don’t want to discredit them or anything they’ve done because they have a great body of work, but I’ll never feel like an underdog here.”
