The Michigan State Spartans have played a rather beastly schedule. My method ranks it as the No. 8 most difficult slate, year to date. A tough home loss to the Indiana Hoosiers left MSU banged up and the fans feeling a bit ill. It was a good time for the boys to take last weekend off and maybe have some communication about what needs to happen to close out the regular season.

Let’s also talk about the home stretch of the season. Here's the scoop. The Spartans have the final road game of the regular season this weekend as they travel to Champaign-Urbana to face the Fighting Illini. I believe that the best way to think about this contest is that it is a high upside proposition that is filled with opportunity.

MSU is the road underdog, and so losing the game would not be a big surprise nor a topic to lament for too long. A loss would put Michigan State on the brink of elimination from bowl game consideration, but it would not completely sabotage the chance at the postseason. Based on the opponents in the final two games, the Spartans would still have better than 50-50 odds to make a bowl if they wake up on Sunday with a 4-6 record.

As we will see, the odds that Michigan State pulls an upset are respectable. Based on my power rankings, the Fighting Illini are comparable in strength to Maryland, Boston College, and Michigan. The Spartans won one of those three road games and probably should have won the other two. I see no reason why MSU should not be right in this contest, especially coming off from a bye.

If the Spartans can get the upset, making a bowl game for the first time since 2021 is almost a sure shot. My calculations suggest that the odds would skyrocket to over 95%. At that point, we could start to have the conversation about how high in the bowl pecking order MSU could rise.

My current analysis suggests that there is a 50-50 chance that the top four Big Ten teams (Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State, and Indiana) will all make the playoffs. After that, Iowa and Illinois are the only other Big Ten teams on track to finish better than 6-6 if all the projected favorites win out.

Alright hear this: if Michigan State can win out and get to 7-5, the Spartans could be in line to get a bid to the Duke's Mayo Bowl (against an ACC opponent) or the Music City Bowl (against an SEC opponent) while looking down in the standings on schools such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Michigan.

While bowl selection politics can get messy and at times seems downright ill, the idea that Spartan fans might travel to Nashville over New Years while a certain team from Ann Arbor plays a school from the MAC in Detroit just brings a smile to my face.

My advice to the Spartans is simply "do it."

The series between Michigan State and the Fighting Illini has been a series of streaks. Illinois won five of the first eight games from 1955 to 1964, but the Spartans responded by going 8-2-1 over the next 13 games.

Between 1980 and 1992, the Illini were again on top, posting a record of 9-3-1 against the Spartans. But since 1995, Michigan State has won 13 of the past 16 games. The Spartans lead the overall series 27-19-2.

The spread also aligns with this recent trend. Since 2003, Michigan State has been favored in nine of the 10 games, including five of the six games played in Champaign.

Interestingly, all three of Illinois' wins in this span were upsets (in 2006, 2016, and 2019) while Michigan State upset Illinois in 2022 in the only recent game where the Fighting Illini were favored. In the past 10 games, the winning team has covered the spread every time.

As for this year's game, my source had the line open with the Spartans as a four-point underdog. This corresponds to a 39% chance that the Green and White can pull out the upset win. That said, the line appears to be drifting in Michigan State's favor and was under three points at some points this week.

At the risk of making Michigan State fans ill, my computer is less optimistic than the boys in Vegas. Its prediction is a final score of Illinois 26, Michigan State 20. I will note that ESPN's FPI model gives an almost identical predicted point differential.

This analysis suggests taking the under on 47.5 points and for Illinois to cover the spread. I personally feel like the Spartans have a great chance to win this game. But I will stick to the wisdom of my computer for this official prediction.

Table 1 below gives a full summary of the action in the Big Ten in Week 12, 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.