Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

The dogs days of summer typically refer to that period of time in July and August when the temperatures rise and the motivation of people (and their pets) tend to be at their nadir. College football fans will often feel an additional sense of malaise during this time of the year as we patiently wait for the season to begin. Even though we are now two full weeks into the season, Michigan State fans still seem to be experiencing a strange combination of lethargy and anxiety. Sure, the Spartans have outscored Western Michigan and Akron by a combined score of 87-13. But neither of those teams are world-beaters and both the Spartan offense and the defense, at times, were not as sharp as we hoped. The dog days seem to still be upon us. That all will change come Saturday night. For the second year in a row, Michigan State will have a crucial road game against a power five team in the third week of the season. Last year's win at Miami was a bit of a coming out party for the Spartan program...

It is only Week Two and the 2022 college football season has already taken some Strange turns. All across America on Saturday, the results kept getting weirder and weirder. At times, it felt like we had been sucked into a parallel universe. In the first game of the afternoon, Alabama barely escaped their superhero battle with Texas. Is Texas back? Is Alabama washed? That is a plot twist that I never saw coming. Later in the day, there was a massacre of sorts as a group of interlopers from the Sun Belt dimension and a tag-along from the Pac-12 dimension wreaked havok on teams such as Norte Dame, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Texas A&M. At least one casualty of a main character was confirmed (R.I.P. Scott Frost's tenure in Lincoln). In one case, I am pretty sure time-travel was involved. A team from the mountains of North Carolina stuns a crowd of over 100,000 people in part due to a late failed field goal attempt? That feels like 2007. There was even a brief visit to the basketball d...

The first few weeks of September are a time for players and coaches to get settled into the new college football season and accustomed to the new combination of players on the roster. It is a time to identify potential strengths and a time to hopefully shake down a few potential problems before the beginning of conference play. In Week One, the Michigan State Spartans were pushed a bit by the visiting Western Michigan Broncos. For the first time in eight months, the Spartans were able to spar with an opponent with whom they do not share the same locker room. It wasn't perfect, and as a result I am sure both the coaches and the players learned a few things. The old saying goes that a team will show the most improvement between Week One and Week Two. The problem is that it might be difficult to judge any real improvement due to the quality of the opponent this week: the Akron Zips. Here is what we know about the Zips. Their nickname can be traced back a century to the longer version ...

Week One of the 2022 College Football season and the season of the Michigan State Spartans is now complete. So, how are we all feeling? On one hand, the Spartans faced some adversity and overcame it to put away a scrappy in-state opponent. Michigan State even covered the spread (although it was -22.5 in some places at kick-off). A win is a win, especially in the first game against a highly motivated opponent. On the other hand, the Spartans looked sloppy, it was still a one-possession game with under seven minutes to play, and the injuries (some quite serious) are already piling up. What are we to make of all of this? At this point, I simply choose to reserve judgment for now. Is Michigan State not quite as good as fans had hoped in the off-season? Is Western Michigan a little better than expected? It is hard to say. Would the game have played out more positively for Spartan fans had Payton Thorne not thrown a bad interception in the final minutes of the half? If so, would Thorne have ...