Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

It has been a bit of a roller coast ride for MSU football fans over the past 3 years.   After three seasons (2013-2015) of success unprecedented by any Big Ten team from the State of Michigan since the 50s and 60s, MSU fans were brought back down to earth by the sobering 3-9 season of 2016. Then, MSU rebounded in 2017 with a surprising (at least to the National media) 10-3 season.   But, for a variety of reasons, MSU disappointed yet again in 2018 with an under-whelming 7-6 record. At times during the 2016 and 2018 seasons, MSU seemed a bit cursed, like some demonic figure was hovering over the program, sowing division in the locker room and crippling the joints and muscles of the skill players and linemen. It was almost enough to make fans projectile vomit or have their heads spin all the way around. MSU seemed bedeviled. Last year, MSU’s ill-fated trip to the desert to face the Sun Devils in mid-September was essentially a microcosm of all that went wrong for MSU i...

First off, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time out of your day to sit down and talk with me this morning. As you know, we are still early in the year, but if we are going to be able to achieve some of the goals that we set together just a few weeks ago for this project, we need to periodically have these check-in meetings to make sure that we are on target.  Also, I think that it is fair to say that the year didn't get off to the start that we all wanted in the the first week, and that is why we had to put you on a brief Performance Improvement Plan with some specific targets for the week to make sure that you stay on track. So, now that we are two weeks into the current project, let's review those targets for last week: 1) Achieve better than 8.0 yd/pass attempt on offense Your actual result this week was actually 10.0 yd per attempt!  That is really great work, honestly. In fact, that is the best single week performance in that area for you in the past 3 yea...

So, how was your Labor Day weekend everyone? Good? I am not sure about everyone, but I personally like the Friday night time slot in Week 1. It frees up the whole rest of the weekend for time with the family and it also frees up time to be able to see a lot of the college football action on Saturday.  After watching MSU's offense struggle on Saturday, if was a bit of a palette cleanser to watch several other teams perhaps also not perform at their peak efficiency. If nothing else, I think a having a little extra time for reflection on the game was helpful. However, not to beat a dead horse, but MSU's offense was still pretty bad last weekend. I have accepted that. But, MSU is still 1-0 and what matters is the future, not the past.  While there were a lot of bad plays on the offensive side of the ball, there were some positive moments as well, and that gives my optimistic brain enough fodder to believe that MSU's offense can get to the level of serviceability needed to ha...

Throughout the off-season, on the offensive side of the ball at least, the operative word was "change."  The offensive coordinator was changed. Many of the position coaches changed their responsibilities. The scheme was going to change.  The offense was reported to have to won all the August camp scrimmages.  That was a change.  The players, many of whom had found enough success to win 10 games in 2017 were supposed to back and healthy for a change. Change was in the air.  So, when I walked into Spartan Stadium Friday night I hoped... perhaps expected to see something different. Unfortunately, sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. In general, I am a pretty optimistic MSU fan. In addition, I am not going to claim that I know a ton about the X's and O's. But to my untrained eye, I saw a lot of things about Friday night's performance that seemed all too similar to last year. The offense only managed to put the ball in the end-zone onc...

A week or so ago, I explained what might be a new method to quantify the strength of schedule of various college football teams by calculating the expected wins of each team using a normalized power ranking.  At that point, I presented just the data for the Big Ten in conference play. As a supplement to that piece, I expanded my analysis to include all FBS teams, both overall and in conference play. I also came up with a better way to visualize the data, I think.  While I am not going to into too much more detail here, the results are interesting, so I thought I would do a data dump before the season really gets underway. For my new visualization, I am plotting the expected win total (i.e. the sum of the individual game win probabilities) versus the preseason ranking for each team.  I added a simple trend line for comparison, because my initial analysis showed that the higher ranked teams tend to grade out with easier schedules, in part because they don't have to play...

It's Fall. It's 2019, and Spartans Fans, we are Back on Line.  After the long, dark summer of All Around bad Tiger's baseball, the dawning of another season of MSU football seems Heaven Sent.  The season is so close that I can almost Taste It, and for some reason, I still have the Strange Desire to continue to write about it. For the past several years, I have been providing a weekly preview and summary of each weekend's action, and this year I will give it yet another go. As for MSU, the key question on everyone's mind is the offense, and the Communication from the staff has not been doled out In Excess.  Honestly, I have no idea where we are right now. The Men and Women of Spartan Nation have a lot of Questions.  Will MSU really run tempo?  How fast of tempo?  All the time, or just in spots?  Will there really be a lot more RPOs? Who will be the featured running back? Is the new system really fully implemented, or was there Not Enough Time since th...