Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

In early June, A sub-group of the College Football Playoff's management committee presented a proposal to expand the current four-team College Football Playoff into a 12-team tournament. Over the last week or so, a few details have started to emerge. Here are the key points of this proposed expansion: The six highest ranked conference champions would automatically qualify for the tournament The four highest ranked conference champions would be seeded No. 1 through No. 4 and given a first round bye. The remaining two conference champions and six additional at-large teams would be seeded No. 5 through No. 12 and would play in a series of four first-round games on the campus of the higher seed at some point in mid-December The quarterfinal round would be played on or near January 1st, and the report suggests that teams would be assigned to their traditional bowls in the quarterfinal rounds. The semifinals and finals would be played at some point in January, but the bowls or stadiums t...

 Now that the calendar has turned to June it is time to start looking ahead to the upcoming college football season. One topic that has made headlines over the past few weeks is that of a possible expansion of the college football playoffs. It was announced this week that consensus is building to expand the field from the current four-team format to a 12-team tournament. Additional details of this proposal have begun to emerge. Notably, the top six conference champions would automatically qualify (which may or may not include all five Power Five champions, but which would necessarily include at least one team from the Group of Five conferences). The remaining six at-large teams would be selected by the Selection Committee, assumingly using a similar process to what is used today. Furthermore, the teams would be seeded from one to 12, with the top four teams receiving a first-round bye and the teams seeded No. 5 to No. 12 playing in an opening round sometime in mid-December, mo...

  In the grand scheme of things, the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball have generally been strong over the past few years at Michigan State University. While the last basketball season and the final few years of the Dantonio era were a disappointment, the past 10-25 years of MSU sports have provided a lot of great moments. But how does the Spartans’ success compare to other programs in the Big Ten? Certainly MSU basketball is the flagship program in the Big Ten, but that has not always been the case. In football, the Buckeyes reign supreme, but their program has also had its historical ups and downs. In order to address this question, I decided to do some simple counting. I decided to count simple things like overall and conference wins. But, I also wanted to look at championships and post-season success. So, I counted accomplishments that usually earn a team a banner or trophy: Big Ten regular season titles, tournament titles, Final Fours, bowl wins, and National Ch...

There are a lot of things that make for a great college basketball game: the players, the coaches, the fans, the mascots, the venues... each one bring something different and exciting to the table. But, there is one part of the game that seems to bring out the ire of fans on all sides: the officials. Obviously, officials are a necessary part of the game. But, every fan can likely think of a game where the officials seemed to "take over" and effectively because the story. Every fan can likely think of a single call that they believe single-handedly cost their team a game. (Most MSU fans would likely point to the non-call on Draymond Green in the 2010 Final Four.) At the end of the day, officials are human beings trying to do a job to the best of their ability. If they do their job perfectly, they likely won't get noticed at all. It is only when they are at the center of a controversy that we learn their names. Every generation of Spartan fans likely knows the names of a f...