Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

In our universe, the college football season continues to trudge along. The ACC, SEC, and Big 12 have all started conference play, along with the AAC, C-USA, and Sunbelt leagues.  As we all know, the Big Ten recently voted to start play in late October, and now the Pac-12, MAC, and Mountain West are following suit. However, at the same time, multiple games are postponed or cancelled every week due to positive COVID-19 tests, including this weekend's contest between Notre Dame and Wake Forest.  Will the Big Ten actually be able to pull off an eight-week season with no byes and no margin for error? We won't know the answer to that question for several more weeks. In the mean time, I present my continuing "coverage" of the college football results from the parallel universe where the original schedule is still being played. Season Overview MSU opened the season with an exciting win at home over Northwestern, 46-40, only to fall flat the following week at BYU, 20-44. Last...

Here we go again. It is my annual tradition to perform a detailed mathematical analysis of the coming football season based on the tools and trends that I have assembled over the past 20 years. Back in late July, I explained the methodology in detail and gave a detailed breakdown of the Big Ten and the rest of the Football Bowl Subdivision . But, soon after that work was done, the original schedules were scrapped. A few days later, the Big Ten put out a revised, 10-game, conference-only schedule. I then proceeded to conduct an analysis of that schedule . A few days later, the Big Ten decided to cancel the whole season. (I am also considering a detailed analysis of COVID-19 to see if I can get that cancelled as well.) But, this past week the Big Ten decided to reverse course. Now, we have yet another revised schedule, this time with only eight conference games, starting the weekend of October 24th. So, it is time once again to dust off the slide rule and see what impact the new sche...

In our universe, it was a pretty big week. On Wednesday, it was announced the Big Ten has worked out a plan where they believe that college football can be played while minimizing the safety risks associated with COVID-19. A revised Big Ten schedule has been announced and the first Big Ten kick-off is planned for October 24th. Football is back! That said, we still have several weeks to wait. There is honestly no guarantee that we will actually make it late October without some other plot twist that will once again leave us with no Big Ten football in our particular universe.  So, for the next few weeks, I continue my "coverage" of college football from that other, parallel universe where COVID-19 never happened, and the original schedule was played. Season Recap In the first two weeks of the season in the parallel universe, MSU managed to beat Northwestern in Week One, but ran out of steam in the second half at BYU, resulting in a 1-1 record.  Elsewhere in the Big Ten, Ohio S...

In our universe, college football continues to limp along, trying to salvage some semblance of normalcy despite the fact the Big Ten and the Pac 12 decided weeks ago to delay the season and several others teams have been forced to postpone or cancel games due to COVD-19 outbreaks. While reality is far from normal, I prefer to imagine a world where there is no global pandemic, and we just finished playing the second full week of the original schedule.   To that end, I present my continuing "coverage" of the results of Week Two of the 2020 college football season from the "parallel universe," which was generated from a single Monte Carlo simulation, as outlined previously. To briefly review the results of Week One, Mel Tucker and the Michigan State Spartans earned a hard fought win over Northwestern, 46-40 in the season and conference opener for both teams. Michigan scored a big win for the Big Ten on the road at Washington, 36-19, and there were a handful of notable ...

In a normal year, Labor Day Weekend marks the full-fledged return of college football. In a normal year, Saturday would have marked the debut of MSU's 25th head football coach: Mel Tucker. Instead, college football limps along in a bizarre state of flux. While some schools plan to press on, full speed ahead, others stop and start and stop again. The Big Ten might play in January, or November, or October, or not at all. In this unprecedented situation, I thought that it would be fun to imagine another world, in a parallel universe, where COVID-19 does not exist. In this universe, the original college football schedule would have been played, as planed. Last week, I introduced my plan to simulate the entire 2020 college football season, using the mathematical tools and historical data that I have developed and acquired over the past 20 years. Today, I report on the full results of Week One in the parallel universe, starting in East Lansing. Northwestern at Michigan State (-3) It was ...