ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Jordan Hall was the first Spartan to get his hands on the Paul Bunyan Trophy after Michigan State’s upset win over Michigan on Saturday night.
He promptly dropped it right on the goal line.
Photo credit: Marvin Hall/Spartans Illustrated
Then he smiled, picked it up, cradled it against his chest, and ran toward the celebration.
Photo credit: Marvin Hall/Spartans Illustrated
Michigan State had beaten Michigan 15-6 before 111,172 at Michigan Stadium, ending a six-game losing streak with five Liam Boyd field goals, four takeaways, and a defense that kept the Wolverines scoreless until the final 95 seconds.
An injury had kept Hall out of the game, as injuries had so often this season. As the game wound down, he walked the sideline with a white earbud in his left ear, smiling, exchanging high-fives, and hugging those around him.
With roughly 15 seconds remaining, as Michigan State completed its final kneel-down, someone from the University of Michigan tapped Hall and directed him toward the trophy. He went to retrieve it, with a small group of Spartans following along.
After the brief mishap on the goal line, Hall ran Paul Bunyan out toward the 30-yard line, towards where the teams were shaking hands. Kenny Soares grabbed the trophy from him and ran it back toward the end zone they had just left.
Photo credit: Marvin Hall/Spartans Illustrated
Michigan’s players quickly headed for the tunnel, surrendering their home field to the visitors from down the road - and the celebration was just getting underway. The Spartans had controlled that field for 60 minutes. For the next 10 to 15 minutes, they made themselves at home.
From the upper reaches of Michigan Stadium, the Spartan Marching Band sent the fight song spilling down over the Wolverines’ turf. Below, Soares ran through the end zone, hoisted Paul Bunyan one-handed above his head, and struck the statue’s pose himself, grinning toward the Michigan State fans gathered beneath the goal post closest to the band.
In a stadium built to make visiting teams feel small, Michigan State took its time being seen and heard. The Wolverines were leaving, and the Spartans were carrying their trophy around the place, celebrating with the people who had made the trek to Ann Arbor after six consecutive losses and stayed to watch them win.
The celebration stretched nearly all the way around the stadium. Fans leaned toward the field, players reached up, and one gathering of green and white gave way to another. There was no reason to hurry. The field where Michigan was supposed to impose itself on its visitors had become the setting for a long, happy Spartan procession, accompanied by Michigan State’s fight song and the Paul Bunyan trophy wearing the visitor's white helmet.
By the time they reached midfield again, they had made sure every Spartan waiting along the front row had gotten a high-five. Only then did they turn toward the tunnel. Hall and Soares stepped aside for Sparty, who had changed into his own Paul Bunyan outfit during the game’s final minutes, complete with a beard and flannel.
Photo credit: Marvin Hall/Spartans Illustrated
They made their way out of the crowd, and in the tunnel leading up to the visitors’ locker room, Hall had the trophy again. He carried it until he handed it to head coach Pat Fitzgerald for the final few steps to the visitors locker room.
Fitzgerald carried the helmeted trophy into the locker room and lifted it toward his team.
“Whose state?” he yelled.
“Our state,” the players replied.
“Whose state?” he yelled again, his voice cracking.
“Our state,” came back the reply.
Hall’s mother had her own celebration to share with her son.
“Congratulations son!!!!” she texted him. “Y’all bought Paul home.” Forgetting the "r" in the excitement. Green and white hearts, a football, and a flexed biceps accompanied the message. She finished with “I love you!!” and a kissing-face emoji.
“Love you too momma,” Hall replied, adding a red heart of his own to his reply.
At his postgame press conference, when asked about Hall, Fitzgerald said would not presume to describe all the emotions of a player whose injuries had denied him so many opportunities to participate. Having missed important games himself, he understood something of that experience. What he could see, though, was Hall’s happiness.
“To see him happy, I’m over the moon,” Fitzgerald said. “He has been an outstanding captain. He’s been an outstanding teammate.”
For Hall, the night meant celebrating a victory he had been unable to help deliver on the field. For Alessio Milivojevic, though, it meant returning after spending much of the week unsure whether his body would allow it.
After the game, smiling ear to ear, the quarterback sat facing reporters with a black cross still painted on his right cheek. A devout Catholic, Milivojevic said he wears it in eye black on his cheek every game.
He had spent the days leading up to this one monitoring his recovery, responding to treatment, and trying to avoid another game on the sideline. He had missed the UCLA game, only the second game he could recall missing in his football career.
Watching had been difficult. He encouraged teammates and tried to help from the sideline, but afterward, his attention turned to getting himself ready for Michigan.
“I wasn’t gonna miss this game,” Milivojevic said. “I was gonna do every single thing I can in the treatment room, in the training room, in the weight room, just to be able to get back and play for my team.”
His availability remained uncertain through much of the week. His confidence grew Thursday and Friday, and Saturday’s warm-ups left him feeling ready.
Even a less encouraging warm-up might not have convinced him to stop.
“To be honest, if it didn’t go well, I was probably still gonna try to play,” he said.
He completed 21 of 32 passes for 188 yards without an interception, distributing the ball to nine receivers. Chrishon McCray caught six passes for 92 yards, and Bryson Williams supplied the longest completion of the night, a 36-yarder that helped set up Michigan State’s fourth field goal.
Milivojevic helped the Spartans maintain possession for 38:07, run 75 offensive plays to Michigan’s 52, and convert nine of 20 third downs. Michigan State finished with 298 yards to the Wolverines’ 192.
Fitzgerald saw a quarterback controlling the game while playing through the circumstances that had threatened to keep him out.
“Les is one of the toughest guys I’ve ever coached, period,” he said.
He praised Milivojevic’s management of the offense and called his performance spectacular. Told that his coach thought he had been excellent, Milivojevic declined to go that far.
“I wouldn’t say excellent,” he said. “I would say I did a good enough job to get us the win.”
He sent the credit toward the offensive line, running backs, and defense.
Milivojevic thought about the preparation stretching back to January and the beginning of the team’s time together under Fitzgerald. Seeing his teammates happy made the locker room celebration especially meaningful.
“One of the best feelings of my entire life, to be honest,” he said.
Outside the program, the Spartans' record offered little reason to expect an upset. Inside it, Milivojevic said, players kept preparing without giving in to self-pity or abandoning their confidence in one another.
“Everyone stayed confident in themselves, stayed confident in the team and the coaching staff,” he said. “And we went out there and got a win.”
Fitzgerald acknowledged that the results so far this season had fallen short of what he and Michigan State’s supporters wanted. He said he owned that. He was equally firm that the work had continued.
He traced that approach to his own experience as a player helping turn around a program, when belief had to come before the results that might justify it.
“It’s about having belief without evidence,” Fitzgerald said.
Saturday supplied evidence in several forms, including an offensive line that told its quarterback early that Michigan State could run against Michigan.
Milivojevic heard confidence in the huddle from the beginning. The linemen believed they could handle the Wolverines up front. The Spartans trusted them, and a third-quarter possession gave them an extended opportunity to prove it.
Michigan State led 6-0 when a Michigan punt pinned the offense at its own 1-yard line with 12:53 remaining in the third quarter. Brandon Tullis gained nothing on first down.
On second-and-10, Milivojevic found Fredrick Moore on a short hitch. Moore made a defender miss and gained 10 yards, giving the Spartans their first first down and enough space to begin working.
Even if the possession had stalled soon afterward, Milivojevic explained, that conversion would have helped Michigan State change field position.
Instead, the Spartans kept going.
Tullis ran for seven yards, then five, then four. Kenneth Williams broke loose for 23 yards on third-and-6, moving the ball to midfield. Carson Gulker converted another third down with a three-yard run. Later, Milivojevic found Samson Gash for 11 yards to Michigan’s 16.
By the time Boyd kicked a 38-yard field goal, Michigan State had run 17 plays, traveled 79 yards, and consumed 10:41. The possession accounted for all but one second of the Spartans’ third-quarter time with the ball.
“I was just handing it off and kinda getting out the way,” Milivojevic said.
Fitzgerald’s response to a question about the drive captured how much he enjoyed watching it.
“Yeah, that was cool shit, wasn’t it?”
He apologized for the language, then explained the importance of getting that first first down and building from there.
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