Michigan State might not win the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, but the Spartans won't fall victim to a mental letdown after being left out of the BCS bowls.

After talking with several Spartans players last week, I'm impressed with the approach they're taking toward the upcoming Capital One Bowl matchup against Alabama. As expected, Michigan State got snubbed in the BCS selections despite sharing the Big Ten title with Wisconsin and Ohio State and handing the Rose Bowl-bound Badgers their only loss. But the Spartans don't feel like the Capital One Bowl is a step down.

Just the opposite.

"I feel like this is a BCS bowl game," Michigan State quarterback Kirk Cousins said. "We're playing Alabama, and you could easily put the tag 'Orange Bowl' or 'Sugar Bowl' on it, and people wouldn't think any different. It's two very good teams here. This is our chance. This is our opportunity to prove to everybody that we should have been in a BCS bowl game.

"We started the season ranked pretty low and didn't get the respect from the beginning. We felt like we needed to go out and prove it on the field throughout the season, and I think we did that. One more time, we need to prove that we belong."

Of the 10 teams playing in BCS bowls next month, Michigan State was the only squad not to receive a single vote in the preseason AP poll (both Stanford and Connecticut were unranked but received votes). The preseason polls largely shape a team's national perception, and while the Spartans rose all the way to No. 5 in the polls by the end of October, they paid a heavy price for losing so badly to Iowa on Oct. 30.

For Michigan State, an upshot of winning the Capital One Bowl is most likely a high ranking entering the 2011 season.

"It's going to help a lot," safety Trenton Robinson said. "We have to win this game. This is our biggest game, obviously, and it's going to put us up there with the elite teams in college football, where we should be. We just want to be an elite team, and to be an elite team, you have to beat an elite team. And Alabama's a pretty elite team.

"It's going to do a lot for us."

Michigan State knows what's at stake in Orlando, but how will Alabama view the game? By most accounts, the season has been a disappointment for Nick Saban's crew. The defending national champs and consensus preseason No. 1 team eyed a return to the title stage or, at the very least, a trip to another BCS bowl.

Although Alabama is favored and loaded with talent, and Saban does a superb job of keeping his team focused, the Tide didn't have the right mindset for the 2009 Sugar Bowl against Utah and stumbled.

Cousins admitted to some initial disappointment at being left out of the BCS. But the feeling didn't last long.

"You want to play in the biggest game possible," he said. "The dream is to play in the Rose Bowl, and if not, to play in a BCS bowl game. I thought we put together a season that warranted going to a BCS bowl game. Obviously, that didn't happen. So that's all right. We'll move forward.

"This is a great way to see if we measure up and to see if we really belong in the top 10."