EAST LANSING, Mich. — I had the opportunity to speak with Coach Max Wasson of the Michigan State Spartans. Max is another veteran of Fake College Football, having coached at Michigan State for the entirety of it’s fake existence.

“I’ve been with them since the inception of this league.”

Coach Wasson is 10-9 in his career with an 8-6 record in Season 1. The most memorable part of the inaugural season was a thrilling contest against Virginia Tech that was decided in the final moments.

“My highlight of that season was the last-second game-winning TD against Virginia Tech for the team’s first ever win. That was after the Hokies rallied from a 24-7 halftime deficit.”

The Spartans have had their struggles early in Season 2, sitting at 2-3 but showing signs of promise. Max spoke about the difficulties they’ve had on the defensive side of the ball and what he plans to do in order to improve the team going forward.

“My greatest struggle is the defense, I think before the USF game, State had given up at least 40 points per game… Before I played USF, I switched to a 5-2 defense, and so far, it has helped. Lots of games are upcoming so I’ll see if the improvement lasts.”

Despite the dismal record to start the year, Michigan State fans point to two close losses and two blowout wins as proof that the Spartans are better than what shows on paper. Coach Wasson agrees and thinks that his competition has been stiffer than most teams in Season 2.

“Central Michigan is a good team, they capitalized the mistakes [we] made and beat us. Indiana is also a very good team and their offense is Top 3 in the B1G, the way they came back from an 18-point deficit was spiritual for them. Louisville is also better than what their record states, and they had just appeared in the CFP [last season]. So I think it’s quite fair to be 1-3 (at the very moment), I felt as though we didn’t go to safe way and so we paid the price.”

The B1G is a tough conference every year and I was able to pick Max’s brain about who the early favorites are to compete for the conference championship.

“Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin are my personal favorites. Indiana is an up-and-coming team that looks to compete for the conference championship. Iowa and Wisconsin were neck and neck for the West title last season, and they have the chances to compete again.”

I asked the coach if he thought his team had an outside shot at the Fake College Football Playoffs. He rubbed is balding head and sighed as he responded.

“That’s quite a very long road from here to appear in the Playoff, usually it takes a good [strength of schedule] and a couple of wins over Top 25 teams to make it in. At the moment, we’re at 3 losses, so [we’ll] will have to run the table and have to make sure we win the East [division] and the conference title, but if that were to be the case, then we would [most likely] be [in] the first five out, depending on the respective rankings and SOS.”

He also gave us a look at what other teams would need to do for the Spartans to make it to the final round.

“A lot of teams MSU have played or will play in the upcoming weeks will have to win almost every one of their games to generate a very good SOS.”

Michigan State has suffered a surprising number of injuries and I was able to ask the coach his thoughts on how the team has responded to the heartbreak.

“Responding to the question about the injuries, such over at the DT position had the morale turn a 90 degrees. But I believe they’ll progress their health and be ready to get back at it again.”

I thanked the coach for his time and Max had one final word for his team and his fans before he hung up the phone.

“There’s no such thing as overconfidence.”

For FSPN, this has been Joshua Average.