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2026 College Football Analysis, Part One: 2025 Reflection

It is a new dawn and a new day for Michigan State football. First-year head coach Pat Fitzgerald attended Big Ten Football Media Days this week wearing green and white for the first time. In a little over a month, the latest iteration of Spartan football will take to the field. Only time will tell whether the new regime can elevate the Spartans back toward their previous heights. In the meantime, it is time to kick off my annual preview of the upcoming college football season. Over the past several years, I have developed and refined a set of mathematical tools to better understand the sport. With the 2026 season approaching, it is time to open the analytical toolbox and see what we can learn. Before we dive into the upcoming season for the Michigan State Spartans and beyond, it will be helpful to review the results of the past season. General Lessons from the Past During the summer, college football fans and analysts have limited information. Still, there is no shortage of predictions...
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Michigan State Football 2026 Positional Preview: Offensive Line

In the game of football on the offensive side of the ball, skill players such as quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers are often the ones who make the highlight reels. But n the background of almost all explosive plays in a offensive lineman who made a key block or picked up a blitzing defender. The five men who make up the offensive line form the backbone of all successful offenses. Issues at just one of the five positions can turn a very good offensive into a below-average one. Unfortunately, offensive line play in East Lansing has not been a strength for most of the last decade. In 2025, the Spartans averaged just 122.8 rushing yards per game and 3.78 yards per carry. Both values ranked outside of the top 100 of 134 Division I teams.  In fact, Michigan State has only average over 130 yards per game or over 4.0 yards per carry once since 2017 and that was in 2021 when future Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker, Jr. carried the rock for the green and white. New head coach Pat ...
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Tom Izzo, by the numbers

It has been over a month since Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament by the UConn Huskies in the Sweet 16. It will also be approximately six months before the next year's team takes to the court again.  With the commitment of Anton Bonke on April 22 and the departure of guard Divine Ugochukwu via the transfer portal, it will likely be a quiet summer in East Lansing on the basketball front. But one thing that Spartan fans can count on is that one of the best coaches in the history of the game will once again be patrolling the sidelines next season in the Breslin center. As summer beckons, it is a good time to look back and reflect on the amazing career, so far, of Tom Izzo. Big Ten Dominance Tom Izzo is currently the winningest coach in the history of the Big Ten conference. He will likely hold onto this title for the foreseeable future. As of the end of the 2026 season, he currently holds the record for both total wins at a Big Ten s...
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Michigan State versus UConn in the Sweet 16, by the numbers

On Friday evening in our nation's capital, two storied programs will meet in the Sweet 16 for the right to advance to the Regional Final on Sunday. The No. 3-seeded Michigan State Spartans will tangle with the No. 2-seeded UConn Huskies. Sunday will mark the third all-time NCAA Tournament meeting between the Spartans and Huskies. In 2009, Tom Izzo and company defeated UConn in the national semifinal game at Ford Field. It was the only loss that UConn coaching legend Jim Calhoun ever suffered in his three trips to the Final Four. Five years later, UConn exacted revenge on Michigan State as the No. 7-seeded Huskies overcame a nine-point second-half deficit to upset the Spartans in the 2014 Regional Final. A little over a week later, UConn hosted the National Championship trophy. UConn is currently a narrow 1.5-point favorite against MSU, which is just barely below the historical average of a two-point spread in No. 2 versus No. 3 seed games in the NCAA Tournament. Based on this sprea...
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What are the odds of picking a perfect NCAA Tournament bracket?

As the college basketball fans awaits best four days of the year, I am sure that there are some people out there that are struggling to finalize their office pool bracket. As they stress about which No. 12 seed team to select in an first round upset or which dark horse team to advance to the Final Four, it is natural to have one of two related thoughts: "What if this winds up being exactly how the tournament actually plays out?" or "What are the odds to correctly pick the results of the entire tournament?"   This is a question that a lot of people have tried to answer over the years, myself included. As we will see, this is actually a much more complex question than it might appear on the surface. It is also a question that a lot of smart people don't get right. But I think that I have found the answer. There is one extremely simple way to think about this problem.  If you assume a person is simply randomly guessing on the winner of each game, the odds are very...
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