Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

I am honestly not sure what to say about Saturday's game.  I am almost lost for words (though, not really). It just completely sucked. I was honestly hoping and expecting a sharp performance from the Spartans after a bye week. Nope. What did we get instead? Well, we got busted overages, ill-timed penalties, poor execution, a fumbled punt, a blocked FG, interceptions, and a crazy new rash of injuries. Oh, and several thousands of us sat in a steady drizzle to witness it... at least for a while.  Then, just when you thought that maybe Notre Dame would do the same thing to Michigan in the rain that Penn State did to MSU and you could at least sleep well from a tiny dose of rivalry schadenfreude... Nope. And of course Josh Langford is out until (at least) January, and of course Kyle Arhens sprained his ankle, and of course the Hauser waiver was denied, and of course Illinois now looks like a legit threat. Of course... Because sometimes when it rains, it pours. ...

Last week I was on an international business trip when suddenly, I had a problem.  I opened up my laptop to a simple black screen.  As any technically savvy person would do in this situation, I proceeded to either tap and then jam down the power button for various lengths of time in rapid succession, hoping to find the magic combination that would cause my computer to come back to life.  I was not looking forward to having to conduct two full days of business meetings in a foreign country using a combination of pictionary and interpretative dance.  Plus, I had no idea how I was going to complete my Week 8 preview blog post.  It was a serious situation. Fortunately, after several failed attempts to reboot the machine, at least two blue screens of death, two calls to the IT helpdesk, a couple of boots into safe mode, and some googling how to restore to previous save points, I was able to restore the machine to proper operating order. The business trip (and last ...

The Butterfly Effect is not just a bad Ashton Kutcher movie (rotten tomatoes critics score = 33%). It is also not just part of a pseudo-intellectual sequence of Jurassic Park (rotten tomatoes critics score = 91%).  The Butterfly Effect is concept in the field of chaos theory, most associated with American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz (rotten tomatoes: no opinion).  Lorenz used the analogy of how a butterfly flapping its wings in the southern hemisphere may affect the path of a tornado in the Midwest. The underlying concept being that in very complex and dynamic systems, small changes in one place can have a very dramatic effect somewhere else. In many ways, the methods that I use to model college football are quite similar. One lesson that I have learned over the years is that, in general, we just don't have enough data to work with. I think that I can make some predictions with a known level of mathematical probability, but the variance is really high. Furt...

MSU may be taking the week off, but some of the rest of us still have work to do. Data never takes a vacation.  So, I am back again with some more analysis and bad advice when it comes to the action of Week 8.  The only things that I can promise is that MSU is not going to cover or hit the over, but they also certainly won’t lose. Speaking of work, my work has taken me to Japan this week. So, here I am, an ocean away where I have been enjoying conversations in broken English, dodging typhoons, and pounding as much raw fish and plum wine as possible.  I also went through a 6-8 hour period when I thought my laptop died, so on some level it is a miracle that I am even typing this now. (This is really just my way of providing an excuse as to why I am later than I would have liked in getting this week's preview posted, and why I am posting in the middle of the night EDT). Meanwhile, MSU is Taking a Break, and the first order of business is to get some rest. Perhaps this we...

I will admit it. I was pretty confident in this week's game in Madison. I heard the discussion about how hard it was going to be to muster the same level of focus and physicality to be competitive on the road in back weeks against Top 10 teams. I just kind of blew that off. I looked at Wisconsin's competition so far, and I wasn't impressed. I saw MSU beat up Northwestern back in Week 4 and then I saw that same Wildcat team hang with the Badgers.  I figured MSU would be able to muster enough juice to limit Wisconsin's running attack and then Coan would struggle to make plays.  I even was foolish enough to think that MSU's offense would look sharp and maybe even have some breaks go their way for a change. In the immortal words of Luke Skywalker, "Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong." (Sigh) So, instead of an emotional, program-validating upset win, we got a crap sandwich force-fed to us for 3 hours. It was truly painful to watch. The ...

As MSU makes its way through the Hero’s Journey that is the 2019 Football season, my mind is drawn this week to some similarities to the uber-iconic original Star Wars film, Episode 4: A New Hope.   During the trailer which aired this summer, that was a promise of old faces in new roles. (Hey, is that Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing? ...In a space / cowboy movie? Why does MSU's "new" offensive coordinator look so familiar?)   At the year beginning, there was some whining and some adventure, but then tragedy struck (R.I.P. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. I suspect they were taken out by Pac-12 officials). Our hero(s) then went on the road for some more adventures. Along the way, they picked up some new friends with some skills (Is that Han Solo? No, it’s a competent TEs! Welcome, Matt Seybert!) Last weekend, our heroes found themselves in the most dangerous place in the Big Ten galaxy.   Despite the clever storm-trooper disguises and early heroics, MSU has now found it...