George Perles passed last night. He was 85 years old.
The eulogies that were either already prepared or currently being produced will note that he was a Michigan State football coach, athletic director, trustee as well as the father of the Motor City Bowl.
What those remembrances will likely gloss over is his 1988 football season in East Lansing, which - to me, anyway - is still the most batshit insane title defense campaign of any Big Ten champion, ever. Honorable mention to the 2018 Ohio State Buckeyes, who produced the worst defense in 50 years, a record-setting pace for penalties and a scandal en route to going 13-1 and hoisting the trophy in Pasadena.
They were bizarre, but the 1988 Spartans were absurd. Urban Meyer's final team's title defense was successful. Perles' only unshared title defense was...it was something.
Imagine the defending Big Ten and Rose Bowl champions opening the season in their home stadium. They're nationally-ranked, celebrated, adulated and highly anticipated, as they embark on one of the most difficult challenges in college football: Keeping the title on campus.
As Ohio State fans, we just got a chance to witness this back in August when the Buckeyes took care of Florida Atlantic, the eventual Conference USA and Boca Raton Bowl champions. Back in 1988 Michigan State opened its title defense in East Lansing under similar circumstances; they had another strong team with a bunch of new faces in key places taking on a paycheck opponent.
The Spartans were hosting Dick Anderson's Rutgers Scarlet Knights, who hadn't won more than six games in a season for awhile, and were 10 seasons removed from their only bowl game appearance in program history. The hapless visitors from New Jersey shocked the defending champions at home, overcoming nearly 200 yards of rushing from Lorenzo White's replacement Blake Ezor.
Stunned, the Spartans were forced to regroup and prepare for eventual national title winner No.8 Notre Dame in a revenge game from the previous season's loss in South Bend. The Fighting Irish were held to just two passing completions while grinding out a 20-3 win, leaving Michigan State 0-2 on the season and at home.
IN 1988, SPARTY OPENED 0-4-1 AND YET BY MID-NOVEMBER WAS IN CONTENTION FOR ANOTHER OUTRIGHT BIG TEN TITLE.
Next for the defending champions: No.9 Florida State in Tallahassee (non-conference scheduling in the just-get-to-a-bowl-game era was marvelous). This was also a revenge game, as the Seminoles had lit up the Spartans in East Lansing the previous season in what would be the last loss Michigan State would suffer en route to the Big Ten championship.
A week later, another loss. The champs were 0-3 and heading back home to open conference play against the Iowa Hawkeyes, who like Michigan State had started the season with a high national ranking before taking bad losses to Hawaii and Colorado. The two unranked teams met in East Lansing and played to a 10-10 tie.
Perles' Spartans were now 0-3-1 and heading for Ann Arbor, from where they would head back home without the Paul Bunyan axe in their possession. Five games into the season the defending, still-winless Big Ten champions had not been able to score more than 13 points in a game.
Here's what that looked like heading into an October 15 date with Northwestern:
| OPP | MSU RANK | SCORE | RECORD |
|---|---|---|---|
| RUTGERS | No.15 | L 17-13 | 0-1 |
| No.8 NOTRE DAME | UR | L 20-3 | 0-2 |
| NO.9 FLORIDA STATE | UR | L 30-7 | 0-3 |
| IOWA | UR | T 10-10 | 0-3-1 |
| @ No. 17 MICHIGAN | UR | L 17-3 | 0-4-1 |
Season's over, right? Six games remained on the schedule, and it was all but certain Perles would follow up a Pasadena trip with a postseason at home during the pre-Motor City Bowl era. But remember! It's about to get batshit.
Beating Northwestern finally got the Spartans their first win since beating Southern California in the Rose Bowl 10 months earlier. A week later they won in Champaign, avenging their conference tie the previous season to Illinois.
Then they beat John Cooper's first Ohio State team, which went 4-6-1 and well, beating the Buckeyes in 1988 was very much a you should definitely do this now because it's about to get a lot harder affair. The Spartans were up to 3-4-1 with two consecutive roadies in the state of Indiana. But that doesn't quite communicate the condition of the Big Ten, or the path to get the Spartans back to Pasadena for a second-straight season.
Perles' team entered Bloomington on Nov. 12 needing a win and a Michigan loss to tie the Wolverines for the conference lead. If you weren't paying attention, the Spartans only had that one loss on their conference record. They took care of the eventual 8-3-1 Liberty Bowl champion Hoosiers on their home field and returned to East Lansing for Senior Day against Wisconsin with a shot at a shared Big Ten title.
The Spartans' season-ender with the Badgers was the opposite of its home opener against the Scarlet Knights. They shut out Wisconsin 36-0, scoring as many points in one game as they scored in their first five. It was a laugher very quickly, however - in the pre-internet era - most ears in the stadium were anxiously waiting for updates from the radio about what was happening in Columbus.
Bo Schembechler's Wolverines had their hands full with the weakest Buckeye team of the decade, squandering an early 20-0 lead and falling behind 31-27. If Ohio State could hold on to beat Michigan for the second-straight season, Michigan State would end the season with another Big Ten championship while exchanging the Pasadena trip for somewhere else decent.
Alas, John Kolesar exists; the Wolverines gave Coop his first of 10 Ls that afternoon and Michigan won the conference outright. All alone in 2nd place was Perles' Michigan State rebuild at 6-1-1 in Big Ten play; 6-5-1 overall. They accepted a Gator Bowl invitation and would be playing on New Year's night against the Georgia Bulldogs who lost a de facto SEC title match in a heartbreaker to Auburn.
It's a far cry from what was expected when the Spartans were 0-4-1. Sure, the Big Ten sucked out loud in 1988 with Ohio State rebuilding, but Michigan still beat No.5 Southern Cal in Pasadena and this was an era where conference strength was not a talking point. Teams succeeded and failed on their own merits; affiliations mattered little or not at all.
What Perles pulled off 31 years ago is largely forgotten, but is among the most remarkable in-season turnarounds the Big Ten or any conference has ever seen. RIP, coach.
