Michigan State has a clear path to the Big Ten Championship Game, in which it would meet Iowa.

By Danny Payne
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The Big Ten Championship race in football is much different from one week ago. The No. 4 (College Football Poll, No. 3 AP) Iowa football team owns a spot in Indianapolis, and should No. 5 Michigan State beat Penn State on Saturday at 2:30 p.m., it will win the East and play the Hawkeyes Dec. 5.

The Spartans took hold of the East Division on Nov. 21 with a 17-14 victory over now-No. 8 Ohio State. Michigan State beat now-No. 10 Michigan earlier in the season, and the Spartans led for a combined zero seconds in those two wins.

“Now the big point of emphasis is after a big game, how do you handle it?” Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio said. “Whether it’s something bad or whether it’s something good, but after you’ve done something, how do you handle it? How do you handle success? How do you handle adversity?”

Should the Spartans lose to Penn State, however, things are straightforward from there. The winner of the Ohio State-Michigan contest, set for 11 a.m. Saturday, will be crowned Big Ten East Champions and meet the Hawkeyes.

For what it’s worth, the Big Ten West Champion was designated as the home team in Indianapolis before the season began, so Iowa will likely be in its home blacks.

Elliott apologizes

Following Ohio State’s loss to Michigan State on Nov. 21, Buckeye running back Ezekiel Elliott voiced his displeasure with his team’s coaching staff and announced his intention to declare for the NFL draft at the end of the season.

However, the junior running back apologized for the time and place of his words via Twitter on Monday. Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer said his team accepted Elliott’s apology and will move on from the incident as it prepares for a matchup with archrival Michigan on Saturday.

“We do not condone that,” Meyer said during his weekly news conference Monday. “He apologized. We squashed it as a team. Zeke is a very honest guy. I couldn’t disagree with him; he should have got the ball more. That wasn’t the place for it.”