Just in time for Halloween, this week is a good lesson that in life, some people go through life wearing a mask.

Tonight, the kids on the block might be wearing a mask of Shrunken Head Bob, Beetlejuice, Catnap, Lady Deadpool, or Wolverine. Some of the kids might be dressed as Prima Donnas. One of the more old-school local troublemakers might even pretend to be Superman.

I hear that Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti plans to dress as the cowardly lion this year. A lot of folks in southeast Michigan seem to be wearing their clown masks. But that isn't just a Halloween thing. Sometimes those poor fools just make me laugh.

In the context of college football, even though we are now 10 weeks into the season, we still don't know who some of these teams really are. For example, a team dressed in red from the south will be visiting East Lansing this week. With an 8-0 record at the end of October, it must be Alabama, or Georgia, or Ohio State, right? Who is this masked team?

It turns out that the undefeated opponent visiting Spartan Stadium this week is none other that the Indiana Hoosiers. For several weeks, I believed that the Hoosiers were hiding behind a weak strength of schedule and were masquerading as a Big Ten contender.

But I must now question this assumption after seeing the Hoosiers absolutely dismantle Nebraska one week before the Cornhuskers pushed Ohio State to the brink. I now believe that Indiana is not just a dark horse Big Ten contender. The Hoosiers are a bona fide College Football Playoff contender as well.

As for the Spartans, we cannot be sure who they really are behind the mask either. After a sharp performance over Iowa two weeks ago, the Green and White once again let a potential victory slip through in an emotional loss against Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Was the win over the Hawkeyes an illusion like an itch on a phantom limb? Is this team inching towards a breakthrough or limping to the finish line? Who are the Spartans, really, behind their paper mask? Are they simply masquerading as team good enough to play in a bowl?

This week will provide yet another opportunity to find out. Their mettle will be tested once again and they will be challenged to bounce back. Will the Spartans rise up or will they be knocked down once more? Only time will tell.

Outside of the annual blood feud with the Wolverines, there is no other team that Michigan State has faced more than the Indiana Hoosiers (70 times). The Spartans also have more wins (50) over Indiana than any other school. The two teams play for the Old Brass Spittoon.

Michigan State has only lost five times to Indiana since the mid 1990s, but three of those losses occurred since 2016 and two of them were in East Lansing (in 2020 and 2022). The Spartans are 17-7 against the spreads in the last 24 games, but the performance relative to Las Vegas in the last eight games is even at 4-4.

In summary, the Spartans have historically done well against Indiana, but the last eight games have been quite competitive. I remember a time when the game against the Hoosiers was basically an automatic win. But these are not your old brother's and your daddy's Hoosiers.

Indiana opened as a 6.5-point favorite, which means that Michigan State has a 32% chance to pull an upset. This marks just the second time in recent history that the Spartan have been underdogs to the Hoosiers in East Lansing (2020).

The line has move slightly toward Indiana and both my computer and ESPN's FPI model are even less optimistic. In fact, my analysis of the FPI data triggers a pick for Indiana against the spread.

My computer spits out a final score of Indiana 32, Michigan State 19. I have picked against my computer over the last two weeks, but that ends today.

While it is certainly possible that Michigan State can rise up and steal a win, especially at home, it is hard to see that happening. The most points that the Spartans have scored against an FBS team this year is 32 points (versus Iowa). Indiana's lowest offensive output of the season is 31 points.

Michigan State will have several opportunities to rack up wins in the final three games of the season, but this Saturday is going to be tough. All I can ask of the Spartans is that they show up and play hard. That would signal to me that they are still headed in the right direction.

Table 1 below gives a full summary of the action in the Big Ten in Week 10, including my projected scores, the opening point spread and the computers' projected point differentials.

Note that all rankings referenced below are my computer system's rankings and not any of the national polls.