Two Alabama players take home player of the game honors

And for the Big Ten, Michigan State’s Cotton Bowl Classic and College Football Playoff semifinal against Alabama might as well have doubled as a black eye for the rest of the Big Ten.

Alabama, with five consecutive No. 1-ranked recruiting classes – and three national titles since 2009 – simply overwhelmed the Spartans on the perimeter. The original ruling was that the pass was incomplete, but the review turned it into a touchdown and a 17-0 Bama lead.

The Cotton Bowl’s next turn as a CFP semifinal will be on December 31, 2018. Ridley made it 31-0 with another 50-yard catch and, with one more touchdown, Henry made it a humiliation.

Jones added a high-stepping 57-yard punt return touchdown for the Tide, and Alabama hardly even had to use Heisman Trophy victor Derrick Henry.

But for the next 365 days, all many will remember is the embarrassing way in which Michigan State lost to Alabama on the national stage. It got some pressure on Jake Coker, though not enough without blitzing.

The Tide is the only team to be playing in the College Football Playoff each of its first two seasons. Since 1999, the beginning of the BCS era, the betting favorite has won 10 of 17 national championship games. There were 85,689 in attendance for Ohio State’s victory over Oregon.

On Alabama’s next drive, Coker hit O.J. Howard for a 41-yard gain, getting the Tide inside the Spartans’ 25-yard line.

Up until the first touchdown, the deepest penetration was Alabama reaching the Spartans’ 45-yard line.

But it didn’t change Dantonio’s view of his three-year starter. The Tigers were four-point underdogs to the Sooners but ran away from Oklahomain the second half. But inside the Alabama locker room, confidence in Coker’s arm never wavered. He threw no touchdown passes and two interceptions in the final game of his college career, which he ended as the winningest quarterback in Michigan State history. In the red zone for the first time that game, Cook tried Jones again.

The Crimson Tide’s lead had swelled to 24 points, and the final 18 minutes and 24 seconds would be nothing more than a victory lap while the corks popped and New Year’s Eve champagne flowed on the Alabama sideline. Coker, as is his custom, took zero credit for his dissection of one of the nation’s best defenses.

“I knew that we would be here”, Swinney said. The ball rolled into the end zone. “He’s our quarterback that we’ve hung our hat on here for three years”.

Special teams: D. Early on, the punters played a big role, as this game replicated a toe-to-toe slugfest with yards being hard to come by. He is the 19th FBS player to break that plateau. Henry went over the 2,000-yard mark for the season tonight but was held in check.

That put him at 2,016 yards for the season – only hours before the start of 2016.

The first quarter was nothing but punts.

But the dominance by the Crimson Tide wasn’t completely obvious in the first quarter as to nobodies surprise, defense was the name of the game throughout the scoreless quarter.

Unfortunately for No. 3 Michigan State’s senior quarterback, the stakes were substantially higher the second time around.

In 14 first-quarter snaps, the Spartans called seven running plays and gained a total of two yards. The last time Michigan State was shut out was in a 14-0 loss at Michigan in October 2000. Michigan State had 65 plays for 239 yards. It was downed by the Spartans at the 4. The 10-0 Alabama lead might as well have been 100-0 the way Kirby Smart’s defense was teeing off on Sparty.

There were the handful of deep balls, but the accuracy number might have been the key number. The ball fell into the legs of a Michigan State defender on the ground, but then got knocked out of bounds. The punt went to Jones at the Alabama 43. MSU did the job against Heisman victor Derrick Henry. He has rushed for 1,032 yards and 12 touchdowns.

But the Spartans fell one game short of the championship itself.

Cook finally strung together a couple big pass plays on Michigan State’s final drive of the half. The senior didn’t try to do too much at first, but he took several well-timed shots down the field that proved effective.

The Cotton Bowl was billed as a heavyweight fight, but only one team brought its knockout punch. “It wasn’t a bowl game, ‘Go have a good time.’ It was, ‘We want to go play a good game'”.

“We’d like to enjoy this game for 24 hours, but Clemson’s got a great team”, he said. If it wasn’t for Saban, Dantonio and the Spartans might not be where they are today.