Overlooking Central Michigan could ruin Michigan State's season again

John Bonamego made something perfectly clear Monday.

He is a Chippewa, through and through. Always has been.

“I would say that I never had any desires to go to Michigan State,” Bonamego said during a teleconference Monday.

Bonamego, the fourth-year Central Michigan coach, graduated from Paw Paw High in 1982

They all may not have wanted to be Spartans, but it wasn’t long ago the Chippewas wanted a shot at playing them.

And then 1991 happened.

And then 1992 happened.

The improbable. 

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Central Michigan arrived at Spartan Stadium for the first time Sept. 14, 1991, with very few believers, like it will Saturday. MSU, coming off a share of a Big Ten title a year earlier, entered as a 21½-point favorite and expected to coast in its season opener.

It wasn’t even close. In the other direction.

The defending Mid-American Conference champion Chippewas, in their third game of that season, caught the 18th-ranked Spartans off-guard and rolled to a 20-3 victory. CMU coach Herb Deromedi was carried off the field. MSU coach George Perles was left to process a sucker-punch reality check. MSU went 3-8 that season, and the Chippewas finished 6-1-4.

The next year, CMU arrived as a known commodity and again an underdog by 20 points. Again, Deromedi and his team walked away as victors, 24-20. Both the Spartans and Chippewas finished with 5-6 records.

MSU won the next five games in the series. The Spartans were favored by more than 20 points in each.

Then in 2009, a Butch Jones-coached CMU team loaded with future NFL players beat MSU again. The Chippewas were a 14-point underdog — the only time the Spartans weren’t favored by more than 20 in the 10-game series — and went back to Mount Pleasant to celebrate a 29-27 victory after recovering an onside kick and making a game-winning field goal in the waning seconds.

But things were significantly different by then.

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Yes, it still mattered a lot to the players who were from Michigan. But the once proud provincial rosters of CMU — and to some degree at MSU as Mark Dantonio’s recruiting power slowly extended — began to diminish. Many of those key players for CMU who went on to the pros were not from the state of Michigan. That list included Antonio Brown (Florida), Dan LeFevour (Illinois), Eric Fisher (Minnesota) and Josh Gorday (Georgia).

And scheduling at the highest level of college football also had shifted. Teams like CMU became more attractive draws outside the Midwest. The MAC was viewed in many ways as the Big Ten-lite. It always gave teams a fine test going into their own Power 5 conference schedules and, maybe most importantly, would make a visit without getting a return home game.

“When I was a player at Central, our roster was 100 percent Michigan kids," said Bonamego, who graduated in 1987. "We’re down from that now slightly. We’re probably right around 70 percent, between 65 and 70 percent. Michigan State is up there, they’re not quite that high. …

“I think it means more to the in-state kids on both teams than maybe to the out-of-state kids. But anytime you have a chance to play a Big Ten team or any of the Power 5 or the autonomous conferences, it’s always a challenge for all of us here in the MAC, and it’s something that we gear up for.”

That 2009 defeat remains MSU’s last loss to a non-Power 5 opponent (BYU, which beat MSU in 2016, is considered by most of the Power 5 to be one of them).

The Spartans have won the past three meetings in the series — including the lone game in Mount Pleasant, in 2012 — by a combined 116-24 score. They last played the Chippewas in 2015, Bonamego’s first taste of the rivalry, winning 30-10.

This season, MSU (2-1) enters after winning its Big Ten opener at Indiana, 35-21. The Spartans moved back up to No. 18 in this week’s USA Today/Amway Coaches Poll headed into Saturday’s noon kickoff, after holding on in the fourth quarter of a third straight close game.

“We got away with a big win,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said Sunday night. “Not got away, but secured a big win. I thought it was tough …, and we expected a good football game at this point.”

The Spartans have plenty of issues to iron out — a struggling run game on offense, porous pass coverage on defense — yet were 28.5-point favorites Monday. If that holds by kickoff, it would be the largest spread in the series.

This is a young Bonamego team, and far from CMU’s best. The Chippewas started 0-3 for the first time since 1989, but are coming off a 17-5 win over FCS foe Maine, where Bonamego began his college coaching career. 

“When you’re sitting 0-3,” he said, “you can’t overlook anybody.”

Neither can MSU, a team with aspirations of a College Football Playoff berth.

And make no doubt: A loss to Central Michigan would crush that dream and be an upset with much bigger implications than the first one 27 years ago.

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Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari.