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Michigan State 24, Illinois 14. For all the negativity surrounding their 1-3 start, the Illini still had a chance to begin bailing out their sinking ship today: Michigan State, in Champaign, offered a realistic opportunity to break the Big Ten slide begun against powerhouses Ohio State and Penn State, to find some kind of spark on offense with Eddie McGee in place of longtime starter Juice Williams and set a course for .500 with Indiana and Purdue ahead. As desperate as the situation appeared, MSU was only a four-point favorite coming off its own season-salvaging win over Michigan.

Put it this way: When you make Michigan State look like Penn State and Ohio State, the hope tank is officially on empty. Mikel LeShoure's touchdown at the end of the third quarter -- with MSU up 24-0 after returning a McGee interception for a touchdown -- was Illinois' first touchdown in the first three quarters of any of the Illini's three Big Ten losses to date, which certainly look like the first of many regardless of the level of competition. A winning record and bowl game now seems completely out of the question.

Again, it's not so much that Illinois is losing against a tough schedule as it is that the Illini haven't even been competitive. There's a difference between "0-4 against good teams" -- Missouri, Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State were 14-6 at the start of the day, five of those losses coming against ranked teams -- and "failing to produce a single positive in any aspect of the game." Coming into this game, the Illini were dead last or next-to-last in the Big Ten by almost every significant measure beyond the record -- total offense, scoring offense, passing offense, pass efficiency, total defense, scoring defense, rushing defense, pass efficiency defense, sacks, sacks allowed; name it and the Illini were languishing at the bottom, and did nothing against the Spartans to reverse any of those trends. The quarterbacks will continue to get most of the heat -- McGee was 2-of-11 and left the game after putting up the pick-six; Williams returned from exile to complete 7-of-17 -- but they were sacked five times between them and got no support from the running game or defense. This is a bad team right now in every possible respect, and even Arrelious Benn's presence on the field can't save them.

The Illini are so bad at the moment, in fact, that they have to be closing in on Washington State as the worst "Big Six" conference team in the country; I'd be a more than a little surprised Monday if they opened up as favorites at Indiana. And I think we'd all be knocked out of our seats if Ron Zook wasn't fighting off rumors of an imminent coaching change within the month. If that kind of turnaround was in the works, today was the day, and it wasn't even close.