“I wish I had two more shots at them. I wish I had started out here and had four shots at them. It was a lot of fun today.”

— Senior quarterback Shea Patterson

Michigan State doesn’t wish that. The Spartans were as far from beating Patterson and the Wolverines on Saturday as Paul Bunyan is from being Pauly Shore.

With the senior slinging and Michigan’s defense stinging, a capacity crowd in The Big House lived out their return-to-domination dream.

This wasn’t Devin Gardner, running for his life against a horde of Spartans bent on dismemberment. This wasn’t Denard Robinson, trying to retain his head while William Gholston used it as a twist top.

This wasn’t even Michigan of the early 2000s, having to go three overtimes to outlast this Spartans, or rallying for a cliffhanger win in 2007. This was a thumping. This was a 44-10 beat-down, the Wolverines’ most resounding victory over their sass-saturated siblings since 2002, a 49-3 payback pummeling for Spartan Bob’s theft a year earlier.