Michigan State Spartans College Football Pregame Quote, 12/26/2015

It’s great to be back at the Cotton Bowl. We had a great experience here last year. In so many respects, I think that this Cotton Bowl really sets the bar in terms of how bowls are handled. So I appreciate everything that you’ve done.

Looking forward to the opportunity, the challenge. That’s pretty much what I have said throughout the time here. Very proud of our football team. Want to congratulate our football team as well for the job that they were able to do this year. And also congratulate the University of Alabama as well as they come in today as well. So with that, I’ll take some questions. We’ll sort of go from there.

Can you talk about last year’s dramatic win you had and the players coming back. Are you players automatically looking to get back to the Playoff? Well, this was our goal to be able to come back to a venue like this and to be in the College Football Playoff. This is, I think, the second year second year, I think, for the Playoffs. This is our third straight year in a Big Six or a CFP. But it’s certainly the third big game that we’ve had in a row. Our goals are always trying to go a little bit farther.

And last year the way the season wrapped up, big win in the Cotton Bowl. But at the same time, we weren’t in the College Football Playoff, which our goal is always to win the Big Ten championship, which I believe should put you in that Playoff, if you are fortunate enough to do that.

Last year when you were here, it was the last game of the season. Now you are in the semifinals. Is the approach any different? How do you go about it in this setting? We’re always going to take first things first. So our main focus is to win this football game. So for us, we’re going to approach this like our bowl game that we normally do. Want our players to have a great experience. Obviously we want to win. Obviously we want to be at our best and not just on the field but off the field as well.

But from ‚Äì I think from our standpoint or my standpoint, it’s let’s get to that game and then we’ll see how that week goes. We want to make sure we’re prepared and focused on the task at hand and not get too far ahead of ourselves. So that’s how we are going to take it. We were able to win our last four bowl games. Basically, we are going to use that same type format as we move forward here.

Because you had quite a few days off before getting here, will you be physical early in the week or no? Yeah, we have to. I feel like we have to be able to do those things. I’m sure our players would be disappointed if we didn’t. So we’ll do what we need to do to get ready to play. And I feel like our guys have rested. So I think the first couple days we’re going to have to do some things. It’s sort of a Catch 22 situation. We don’t want to get anybody hurt.

But we need to go hard. I think you need to get your mind right because it’s going to be a physical football team that we’re playing so we need to be prepared.

The guys this year seem to be a little bit different, not from your standpoint, but like Darien Harris. Is that a maturation of the team or the fact they know there will be another game? We’re here the first day, so we’re going to see if they are all about business as we get through the week. You know, our guys have always come to play, and we’ve always done a great job at the bowl site in terms of how we’ve handled ourselves. So there’s an expectation, so we need to continue those.

Can you speak to how Connor [Cook] is doing and what the time off has been able to do in terms of his shoulder? I think he’s doing fine. He’s here. He can speak to that. I think he’s doing great. Played in a couple of games already, so there shouldn’t be any issues there. He’s practiced. That’s where we’re at.

Do you feel like you can present Alabama something they haven’t seen yet at this point? I can’t speak to the other people that they’ve played. I can say that Connor Cook has been an outstanding quarterback for us. He has played very well on big stages. And we’ve won on big stages because of that, because of a lot of different things but that being one of them. So there’s ‚Äì we have high expectations for him to play well, and I’m sure he does as well. Our football team does as well. And I think when your quarterback plays well, you always have a great chance to win a football game.

As far as the travel day, did everybody make it on time? Everybody’s in good standing for the game, yeah. Got a couple people coming in late by design but not many.

When you play against someone who shares the same philosophy you do, is there a danger of not thinking to yourself you know he knows what you know? Our paths crossed, obviously intertwined, 20 years, 15 years ago. So the game has changed I think in that time period. I think philosophies remain the same, so there are similarities there, general football philosophies.

But the structure of who we are and who they are is different in a lot of respects. So there’s always going to be changes. Always things developed, critiqued over the course of time that occurs.

So we are who we are. They are who they are. There are similarities, I think, in his philosophies, basic football philosophies and a lot of technique philosophies. But we just try to get there, maybe in different ways sometimes. And I think that’s the normal course of action as you go through time.

You learned how to win big games. You have been doing it. How do you run into a big game situation? It should help us a lot. We have been on a big stage. This program has grown since 2007. We have had to do things and have a process to it. And so we’ve gone through the various stages of that process: Winning at home, winning away, winning at bowl games, winning a Rose Bowl, a Cotton ‚Äì coming from behind it in a Cotton Bowl. Now you have an opportunity to play on an even bigger stage.

But we’re playing against a football team that has done that as well. So when you get up there in the top four football teams ‚Äì really I could say the top ten or 15, what sets programs apart usually are the inches. Regardless of what the score may look like, the inches set people apart. And you have got to find those inches and be able to transform that into wins for yourself.

I think it’s the way you carry yourself. It’s confidence. It’s your preparation. It’s your attention to detail and those type of things. So we need to have all those things going in the same direction.

Coming back to success and confidence, does that help with the juniors? I think it does. I think it gives us a sense – at least they know the regimen of the bowl game, the structure of the bowl game. We know the people. We played in that stadium before. They have as well this year. But we practiced here.

And I think that there’s something to be said to beginning a year in 2015 and ending a year in 2015 at the same place. So there’s a little bit of something to that, too, sort of ironic. As I said earlier, we’ll see if we can complete that circle. So we’ll see.

We talked a lot about your similarities to Nick Saban and Jim Tressel. What are some of the differences from those men and those mentors, as you call them, that you hold as far as things you believe in and philosophies you have that are yours that you hold? That’s a tough question to answer. I think ‚Äì I don’t think I could ‚Äì that’s an abstract answer. I can’t ‚Äì we could sit here for hours and talk about both ends of that. So I’ll defer on that one question.

Connor Cook, how much has the success this year in the late game drives relied on Connor a little bit and depended on him? First of all, I think two guys made a decision to come back. Shilique Calhoun and Connor Cook made decisions to come back to get to a position like this. So it’s great to see things come to fruition for those guys.

Two other seniors who sit here, Darien Harris and Jack Allen, have had tremendous impact on this football team over four years. With that said, the question – again, if you play well at the quarterback position, great success is going to follow you.

We’ve had the luxury of having that. He’s played on big stages, not intimidated. As I said earlier, many times the most impressive thing about Connor is if something goes bad, he’s able to correct it later on in a series. I’m talking about something catastrophic. Interception for a touchdown or something of that nature doesn’t bother him. He can move forward on that.

I think that’s what makes a great quarterback. If you dive too deep into your pain, bad things sort of happen, I think. So I think that’s one thing over and over and over he’s demonstrated. He has got great ability. He knows our offense better than I do certainly. But knows our offense as well as any coach on this football team and knows it inside and out and knows our receivers and has shown the ability to create and create loose plays and run with the football when he’s needed to. So he has done a lot of different things for us over the course of the last three years.

I don’t think you can argue with his ‚Äì I think ‚Äì is it 34 wins? 34 4 over three years. But that’s why you get to games like this. And there are other people on the other side that are doing special things, too, so that’s why they’re in this game as well.

A few weeks ago I asked about the game planning going further downfield. You said you were not sure if that was really a game plan but that’s what Connor did. What type of playmaker did you think he would be when you chose him? You mean back in 2013? I sort of got that feeling in the Notre Dame game, even though I know at the end of the game that we went in a different direction. It’s good coaching. (smiling).

We sort of got that feeling. We decided to make that move. And he had that opportunity at Iowa. It was his second start away from home, big game, Big Ten opener, those types of things. And he made plays. I think that’s what sort of set him in motion.