IRISH NEWSWATCH: “Notre Dame football faces must win game against Michigan State Don’t count MSU out against Notre Dame” – WDIV

Michigan State opened the season with an uninspiring performance against Furman, an FCS team that finished with a losing record last year. The Spartans didn’t dominate the time of possession, the turnover battle or line of scrimmage, and as a result, they didn’t dominate on the scoreboard. … Mark Dantonio … [has] seen Michigan State play down to its competition for years, including throughout the 2015 season that saw the Spartans land in the College Football Playoff. … Michigan State let teams like Western Michigan, Air Force, Purdue and Rutgers hang around. … pushing the eventual conference champions to the limits. * * * The Spartans will get Notre Dame’s best effort …. The Fighting Irish are desperate after losing the season opener and can’t afford to drop a home game and fall to 1-2. … Michigan State is an eight-point underdog …. But the build-up to this game feels a whole lot like last season’s MSU-OSU game, in which the Spartans were 13.5-point underdogs. Nobody expected Michigan State to win in Columbus, especially without Cook, but three hours later, the Spartans came out on top.