EAST LANSING — Michigan State defensive coordinator Joe Rossi has seen quite a few rivalry games in his football career.

At Division III Allegheny as a defensive end, Rossi would play Wittenberg. As a defensive coach with Thiel he would face Grove City, at Maine it was New Hampshire and then at Minnesota it was Wisconsin.

But none of those quite lived up to his first time taking part in the Michigan State-Michigan rivalry last season.

“You come here and you play in this game, and this one trumps all those. It’s just different,” Rossi said Wednesday. “It means more to people in the state. It means more to the players. There’s more edge to it.

“Not that those other ones weren’t big ones. They were. But you don’t understand it until you play in the game. And so I think that was really a c

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