Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

This may be a bit of an understatement, but that guy Bill Shakespeare came up with a lot of cool quotes.  One of my favorites is from Act 5 of "the Scottish Play" (no need to risk a jinx here) where the title character goes off on a soliloquy about the seeming meaninglessness of life: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." While this is a bit grim... or perhaps a lot grim, it resonates for me a bit this week.  After all, MSU's poor players seem to be a shadow of what they could or should be this year.  Each week they strut upon the stage for a few hours while us fans fret.  We yell at the field or our 50" TVs and sometimes they make us furious.  At the end of the day, what does it all mean?  It's just a game right? (Incidentally, we are also often told tales at the water-cooler by idiots who ...

As should be obvious by now, I am a pretty optimistic person.  So, just like pretty much every game this year, I thought MSU had a good chance of beating the Buckeyes.  It is not that I necessarily expect MSU to win every game; it is more that I can usually at least imagine a scenario where MSU can win, and I can calculate the probability that it will happen.  Wait... this is odd. A man wearing red just showed up at my computer and is insisting that I have to wait 2 and a half to 3 minutes before I can continue typ... . . . . OK, I'm back. As for the game itself, in order for MSU to win, I figured the defense would need to play great (check), the offense and QB play would at least need to be functional (nope), the run game would need to also be functional (uhn uhn), special teams would at least need to be a draw (sorry), and MSU might need a good bounce or two (LOL!) All things considered, much like the Michigan game, it is a minor miracle that MSU was even in st...

One of the first first classes that I ever took at MSU was a 200-level political science class that touched on the subject of strategic thinking.  It was in this course my first semester that I was first introduced to the classic game theory concept of the Prisoner's Dilemma.  The idea is fairly simple: two people are caught be the police, separated, and accused of a crime.  If both people stay silent, they will both receive a light sentence.  If both rat out their accomplice, they both get a tougher sentence.  But, if one prisoner talks and the other stays silent, the rat goes free and the silent prisoner gets a very harsh sentence.  There are literally whole text books written on this scenario, but the basic point is that sometimes what seems like a rational decision to an individual is not the best overall decision if people cooperate. While MSU's situation this week is not exactly like the classic prisoner's dilemma, we are currently imprisoned in the...

This week's game was a little bit tough. I must admit that I felt bad for the Maryland players and the Maryland community for what they have been through this week and this year.  It all sucks, and this week was essentially the peak of the circus.  After a fashion, the University absolutely made the right decision to fire former University of Michigan Defensive Coordinator and all-around piece of garbage DJ Durkin.  But, the whole situation was just painful.  I would rather just not been involved, honestly. Leading up to the game, I thought that there was about a 10% chance that the Maryland team would be galvanized, would come out with their hair on fire, and MSU would get beat, essentially as a victim of awful timing.  But, the rational part of my brain looked at the situation and the match-up and concluded that there was a 90% chance that Maryland's run-based offense would get stifled by MSU's defense, Maryland's fragile psyche would crack, and MSU would wi...

While on my flight back to the USA this week, I decided to re-watch Avengers: Infinity War on the entertainment system of the flight. Perhaps the most talked about scene in that film is when Dr. Strange inexplicably gives up the Time Stone to Thanos in exchange for Ironman / Tony Stark’s life. As his explanation, Dr. Strange simply comments, “We’re in the Endgame now.” The word Endgame typically refers to chess and not necessarily either College Football or a quest to defeat a mad Titan. In chess, it is the stage of the game where major pieces start getting sacrificed in order to pave the way for final victory… or defeat. In other words, in when crap starts to get real. Both in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and in this year’s college football season, we have enjoyed years / weeks of anywhere from mediocre (Thor: The Dark World) to great (MSU vs. Penn State and Purdue) entertainment.  But looking at both MSU’s schedule and the schedule for the whole week, I think that the 2018 se...