Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

One thing should be clear to everyone by now. I am an optimist. So, at the beginning of the year, I was pretty confident that this season was going to turn out to be good, if not special. All the pieces seemed to be there. MSU had a lot of seniors, including at the QB position. The defense looks like it was going to be lights out, and I was optimistic about the new offense. The preseason ranking of around 16 seemed about right. If nothing else, it seemed like MSU was due to have some good luck, both with injuries and otherwise. As I looked at the schedule back in August, a 9-3 season seemed very reasonable, with a 10-2 record doable with some good bounces. My mathematical analysis of the season agreed.  It gave MSU a 40% chance to get to 9 wins or more and only a 18% chance of winning 6 games or less.  So, at this point in the season, I was expecting to be preparing for a nice relaxing Grand-Finale-senior-day-blowout win to push the record to 9 or 10 wins.  After that, ...

Good news everyone! MSU once again won a football game! It may not seem like a huge accomplishment, and let's be honest, it's not.  But still, winning feels a heck of a lot better than losing.  It wasn't easy, however.  For large stretches of that game, it felt like MSU was one or two  disastrous plays away the danger zone once again, for all of the same reasons that put MSU into this position in the first place.  When four of your first eight possession end in a turnover on downs (twice), a missed FG, and an interception in the end-zone, things are not exactly going well.  It was a story that we had all seen before and it has not ended well.  The History of this season has had so much Tragedy and it was almost Comedy. MSU fans essentially have to run the full gambit of emotions just to get through a single 3.5 hour game. But, All's Well That Ends Well. As I look at the final box score... it's fine.  MSU got a shut-out win, covered the spread, a...

Here we are in Week 13. Things have not exactly gone to plan.  But, here we are. MSU is 4-6 and is on a 5-game losing streak (or 7, if you count the bye weeks).  There are still two weeks left in the season and I say let's try to make the best of them. The Show Must Go On. Fortunately, I have good news. The opponent this week is none other than the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, the "pride" of Piscataway, NJ. If you have not heard of them, they are, in a word, bad. How bad are they? In my current power rankings, they are #121 out of 130.  They are slightly better than UCONN and not quite a good as Old Dominion.  They are the worst of all the of Power 5 teams. The closest team in terms of "badness" that MSU has faced this year is Northwestern, who I now rank #109. May I remind you that MSU beat Northwestern on the road by 21 points this year.  Rutgers has only won 2 games so far, one over UMASS (ranked #129) and one over Liberty (ranked #114).  My data suggest t...

This is one of those times where I am going to start off with, “I don’t have much to say,” and then I am going to type 10,000 words.  But, the initial sentiment is the same.  Losing to Michigan sucks and getting blown out by Michigan sucks real hard.  The game itself was essentially a microcosm of the entire season.  MSU came out swinging.  In the first 10 minutes or so, the argument could have been made that MSU was playing the better football. But then, little mistakes began to creep in, and then bigger mistakes, and then eventually things Snowballed. The dam broke. It was just like Ohio State, just like Wisconsin, and just like Penn State.  The bottom line is that this MSU team just isn’t talented enough or mentally tough enough to handle any sort of adversity.  Part of that is circumstantial (this schedule just flat out set up VERY poorly as it turns out) but a lot of it is structural (execution and discipline and other “quality control” issues),...

So, I guess it’s Rivalry Week. Yeah!?!???? I work in Ann Arbor, and while this particular week is usually pretty stressful, it is at least something that I try to have fun with. This year? I am having a hard time getting into it. Real life has been pretty busy, and let’s be honest, the last 6 weeks or so of Spartan Sports has been pretty soul crushing.   While I am sure that I will be really fired up on Saturday at noon when the ball finally gets kicked from the tee, right now… meh. By the second paragraph on this post, I should be in full trash talk mode.   I certainly could point out a lot of the annoying things about the Harvard of Washtenaw County. I could mention their arrogant, elitist attitude, despite the fact the I would categorize the whole lot of UofM grads that I have ever met as a whole to be generally only “slightly above average.”     I could mention how their general behavior frighteningly resembles the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disor...

I almost started this post with a painful, blow-by-blow recap of the painful ebb and flow of the disaster that I witnessed in person on Saturday night in Spartan Stadium. But, honestly, I don't see the point. If you are reading this, you know what happened.  MSU had an early 28-3 lead and through a long, bizarre, and painful series of improbable and unfortunate events MSU lost a heart breaker with 5 seconds left. I could go on for paragraphs about tipped passes, hail Mary's, blown calls, blown assignments, or missed tackles, but the overall weirdness of the game can be summarized by one simple example.  Even the fact the Illinois missed a late extra point was a catalyst for MSU to lose the game.  Had they made that PAT, Illinois likely would have played for OT and not the win in regulation.  These things just don't happen to other teams. The past cannot be changed.  MSU is 4-5 and the season is now in crisis.  That, everyone can agree with. But, in orde...