(AMENDED) Move right along, nothing to see here . . .

(UPDATED 8/11): I’m going to put this up top here, as a result of kj’s link to this page today.  As can be seen in my comments below, I’ve regretted this post from almost the moment I hit “publish.”  I’m still going to write here from time to time — what I’ve realized in the meantime is that I can’t make this a mega-comprehensive, 2-posts-per-day site like I had originally intended.  What I will do is write here when something really piques my interest, and not worry about posting for the sake of posting.

What I really regret at this point is looking like such a drama queen throughout this whole thing (seemingly quitting this blog twice and then firing it up again).  If I have no audience left, c’est la vie and I totally understand – but when I’ve seen stories like this one in the Free Press* in the past few days, it’s been absolutely killing me that I essentially stripped myself of my semi-creative outlet.  Well, I’m taking that back.

*Wherein the Free Press printed sans-caveat MD’s glowing comments about our quarterback situation, and then completely glossed over this little nugget:

Keith Nichol 8-10-0 for 112 yards and 2 TDs (25-yard TD pass to Fred Smith and 37-yard TD pass to Keshawn Martin) — took snaps with the third-team offense.

I mean, holy hell, a guy who is completely ineligible to play this season is essentially functioning as our third-string quarterback?  I know Hoyer barely missed any snaps last season, but what happens if he gets injured this season?  Our backup is a guy who has never taken a snap before, and behind him . . . who, exactly?!?  This is what keeps me up at night.

—–

Original post:

Sadly, I think the whole blogging thing just isn’t for me.  It’s been fun giving it a shot again, but I haven’t had enough time to make good posts, and if I don’t have the time now, I certainly won’t during the school year.  More importantly, I just don’t think my football knowledge is strong enough to put out a quality product on a consistent basis.  I still believe that there’s a disappointing lack of MSU football blogs out there.  I’m not the person to fill the gap, but I certainly hold out hope that someone out there is, and soon.

Meanwhile, I’ll still be in Section 27, screaming my voice away this fall.

Go Green.

Ben.

Buying time.

Thanks for the good comments, everyone. More content coming tomorrow; I’ve been busy the past few days but I do have several things in the blog pipeline. Until then . . . classic football highlights + Spartan Marching Band = tremendous.

A little heavy on the Stanton-era stuff — but that recording of the fanfare is magnificent, as is the chariot, the papier-mâché Sparty, the Rose Bowl cheerleaders, and on and on . . .

My kind of town . . .

One quick programming note: you may have noticed the new de.licio.us toolbar to the immediate right — I’m going to continuously add links to MSU news stories and other interesting Spartan-related stuff on there. I’m sure I’ll still devote posts to the most interesting articles, but the idea behind the del.icio.us (or, rather, msu l.icio.us) bar is quantity, not quality. I’m trying to figure out a way for the widget to display my comments about each of the links directly underneath; hopefully I can figure that out soon. Anyway, enjoy.

————

Unsurprisingly, there’s not a lot to be gleaned from Mark Dantonio’s appearance at the B10 media day yesterday. I know one of the things we were really looking for two Decembers ago was a guy who wouldn’t ever slap himself onstage, and . . . well, MD’s certainly that guy. (Unless Mike Hart is involved, of course; if so, HEAD ASPLODE.) Viz.:

Q. The top three in the preseason this year in the poll is [um, WTF? --ed.] Ohio State, followed by Wisconsin and Illinois. Do you sense that the Big Ten is in a transition, or is this just one of those anomaly years before like Michigan and Penn State get back up there? What’s your sense of it?

COACH DANTONIO: Well, outside of being in the Big East for three years, I’ve been in the Big Ten since ‘95. So throughout that time what I’ve seen is people coming out of nowhere and playing very, very well. 1999 we were picked to be 9th, I believe, ended up 10-2. So, you know, I think it can happen for any football team in this conference. I think that’s basically the case probably across the nation. We have these things and have these magazines that set forth the favorites and talk about all different people coming back, but the reality is Devin Thomas, to give you an example, didn’t catch a pass last year in our spring football game. He caught six passes last year for 60 yards, so the transition that he made, the turnaround that he made, is just as indicative as the turnaround that Illinois made and that another team can make in 2008.

So as I said earlier, we’ll prepare for every single game with the idea that we have an opportunity to win that football game. If we tackle well, if we catch the ball well, if we block effectively and don’t turn the ball over, do the things that are necessary to win a football game. So I don’t know if I’m answering that question, but if I’m not, I’m getting better.

QED. Helluva non-answer there.

So, anyway, here’s a cut-and-paste of the interesting bits from MD’s presser. (Read: the answers which weren’t entirely platitudinous.) Video of about 2/3ds of his appearance is available on the Big Ten Network site here.  Note that I furiously transcribed the majority of the video there, until I realized that the transcript of the entire session was available on the official MSU site. D’oh. The rushed typing did produce comedy gems like this “sentence,” though: “if you don’t talk about championships within your footall team an dwihtin your pogram, youre doin gyour plyaers a disservicea nd sellingt hem shourt.” Yeah, I’m awesome. At least I got “championships” right.

On the state of the program:

Where we sit right now as a program, we’re on first base. Went to a Tigers game so I guess we’ll characterize it in baseball terms. We’re on first base trying to get to second. First base was a bowl game for us. It’s important to take a step forward, not a step back and move forward with a quest for a championship, and I do believe that that’s where we’re headed.

On whether the team can contend this year:

I think if you don’t talk about championships within your football team and in your program, you’re doing your players a disservice and selling them short. Last year every single game we went into, we expected to win. And I can honestly say we had a chance to win every single game going into the last three or four minutes of the game. So it’s not as far a way as you might think, and then again, you know, it’s not as close as you would imagine. So again, I believe that that’s going to take place in terms of what kind of senior leadership you have, how you get through the tough times, how you handle adversity, how you’re able to bounce back after a tough loss, how healthy can you stay, so there’s a lot of things that really factor into that. But our goal will be to win a Big Ten Championship this year, and I have no problems standing up here staying that. I said last year our goal was to go to a bowl game, and we were able to accomplish that, so I think Spartan Nation is excited, and that’s the way it should be.

(Ed. note: I hate, HATE, HATE when the fanbase, or any fanbase, is referred to as “_______ Nation.” Presumptuous, unoriginal, and stoopid. And, I’m not the only one.)

On replacing Devin Thomas and the state of the wide receiving corps:

I think that Mark Dell who was a starter last year, was a true freshman throughout the entire year, he’s raising his game. He had a great spring. B.J. Cunningham is a guy who would have played last year. He’s a guy that I think we can look for great things from. Fred Smith is an incoming receiver that’s one of the top receivers in the state of Michigan and in the Midwest last year. We expect great things from him, as well . . . Deon Curry had a solid year last year, will be a senior. It will be important to have him step up. Sometimes it’s what your quarterback can do, your ability to run the ball, if he’s able to give the wide receivers opportunities, as well. It’s a team game. We’ve got guys that catch the football, guys that make big plays, and we’ll look to use them specifically. So can we get the same production out of one particular person? That’s tough. But can we do it as a committee? We’re going to look forward to doing that.

On the running game:

Javon Ringer is one of the premier running backs in America in the Big Ten Conference . . . I believe in this day and age there’s got to be two-tailback system or three. We’ve used three at Cincinnati at one point in time, they’ve used two at Ohio State, wherever I’ve been – and we’ve used two at Michigan State in the past. We’ll look for some of the younger players to step up. I think we have great ability with those younger players, Andre Anderson right here from Chicago, Ashton Leggett, A.J. Jimmerson, we’ll see how they progress. But Javon certainly will be a lead player for us. He’s going to be instrumental in us having success this year.

On Brian Hoyer:

“It should be noted that last year at this time we had no proven quarterback. There is no substitution for experience. We can’t create practice situations where you are down by two with a minute to go. We can try, but we can’t recreate that environment where you have 100,000 or 75,000 people and a national television audience watching you. Now that he’s had that experience, I think that his experience will carry this football team.”

So, yeah . . . nothing particularly revelatory in any of that, though I do think MD’s commitment to using a multi-back system is interesting. I think we all expect significant carries for our backup tailbacks this season, simply to keep Ringer fresh; he’s had injuries in his career, and I really think our chance for an improvement over last season is more or less shot if he goes down for any extended period of time. However, it seems that MD has a more institutional commitment to showing multiple backfield looks — something that goes beyond injury prevention or a situation like last year, when we had two excellent backs who complimented each other well.

Awfully shiny MNC ring you've got there.

I do like Dantonio’s strong statements about contending for a championship this season. While I definitely still think that it’s important for the fans not to get too carried away in their expectations, I love that he seems to be instilling in the team a belief that they can compete immediately. Truthfully, the best seasons for the team are probably still 2 or 3 years away. However, if the players don’t start the season truly believing that you can really be in the thick of the championship picture, what’s the point at all? Would they really compete otherwise? I think that kind of self-belief has clearly been lacking since the Saban days.

It does seem like most media members and coaches seem to think that if there’s going to be an Illinois-type team this year, it’ll be us. For instance:

Witness the statement from Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema, who noted in his address that he picked Illinois as the team likely to show the most improvement in 2007. When asked what team he thought would fill that role in 2008, Bielema named a few, but mentioned MSU first.

“Mark Dantonio going into his second year, they had us on the ropes in Madison a year ago,” Bielema said. “And I know, that’s going to be a challenging game for us.”

And if Kellen Davis (playing defensive end!) hadn’t decided to piledrive Tyler Donovan about 2 seconds after he had thrown the ball, they might have never made it off those ropes. Bleh.

Anyway, Ringer, Hoyer, and Justin Kershaw were available today. Nothing too interesting from Ringer and Kershaw, but Hoyer was a bit more noteworthy.

You may be the starting quarterback, my friend, but I have more hair than you do.

Echoing Dantonio’s comments regarding expectations:

We go into every game expecting to win that game. Last year we made ourselves believe. We showed ourselves that we could compete with anyone in this conference. That’s something I feel we lacked in years before. We can go into every game with confidence, knowing we have the ability to win the game. That’s goes along with the coaching staff as well as our players believing in our team. I feel we have set high expectations for ourselves. Last year we got a taste of a winning season, what a bowl game feels like, because none of us had been to one before. We’re excited and we all have high expectations for ourselves.

On offseason preparations:

Coach Dantonio mentioned this before – you see people around the football building a lot more than you ever have before. Watching film, doing position work and just getting extra work in. We got to first base last season, and people realize we need to step it up a notch to get over that hump this season. This summer we’ve worked harder than we ever have before.

But, of course, it’s entirely unrealistic to expect an MSU press conference to pass without at least some verbal diarrhea:

But the Spartans believe they’re a lot better than advertised, both individually and as a unit.

“In my opinion, I would say yeah,” Hoyer said when asked if he was “underrated” during the second day of the Big Ten football meetings. “To myself, I think I’m one of the best quarterbacks in the Big Ten, if not the country. If you want to look stats-wise, you can put my stats up against most of the guys in a pro-style offense. I’m sure that they’re pretty comparable.”

“But you have to win to be highly rated. As long as we win this year, all that stuff will take care of itself. A guy like Javon Ringer, he’s a good example of that. Obviously, he’s a lot more underrated than me because he should be a Heisman candidate.”

I can actually buy the Ringer-is-underrated argument, though I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Caulcrick scored most of our rushing touchdowns last year. But, uh, Brian? I think you might be “underrated” because you threw FOUR FREAKING INTERCEPTIONS ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. Truthfully, I’m generally a Hoyer fan; I think his bad rap in some sections of our fanbase is mostly undeserved, and I feel good about him leading our offense this season. But, sweet Jesus, the us-against-the-world-I-get-no-respect nonsense gets quite tiresome.

But the best part about media day? It means only one thing: football is near. 36 days until kickoff. Hallelujah.

Fun with obscure statistics! (Well, sort of.)

It would definitely shock my STT 421 professor (who gave me a 2.5 — and scheduled a midterm on St. Patrick’s Day!) that I’m a big fan of random and obscure sports statistics. I think OPS tells infinitely more about a baseball player’s productivity than regular old batting average does (ok, well maybe that statistic isn’t obscure anymore), I think the tempo-free basketball stats the Big Ten Wonk used for years are fascinating . . . and so on.

So, this post from the Blue-Gray Sky definitely caught my attention a year ago.

Don’t tell Maryland’s Ralph Friedgen that “Defense wins championships.” The chalkboard Xs and Os guru might simply laugh. Over the span of his lengthy coaching career, Friedgen has invented a formula, based entirely on offensive statistics, that he and his staff argue directly correlates to winning football games. Last fall, as his team was making a run toward the ACC Championship game, he sat down to discuss this winning formula with the Washington Post.

Fridge calls his formula Major Offensive Errors (MOE). To calculate it, you count up:

• sacks
• offensive penalties
• fumbles
• interceptions
• dropped passes

Then, count the number of total plays you had in a game. (Don’t forget to add in the number of no-play penalties like false starts, illegal shifts, and delays of game to the total.) Finally, divide the errors by the total plays. What you end up with is a rating of your team’s efficiency — or inefficiency – that Friedgen relies upon heavily.

The goal is to keep the team’s M.O.E. below 12% each game; Friedgen estimates that, for him, the statistic has been an accurate predictor of wins and losses 95% of the time.

So, naturally, I set out to calculate how accurate the statistic was for State last year. The answer: not very, albeit with several caveats.

(Click to enlarge.)

So, we won one game (Pitt) in which our M.O.E. was significantly over 12% — although Pitt’s was much higher — and in 5 of our 6 losses, our M.O.E. was under 12%. However, bear with me for a second here. In the Iowa (11.1%), Ohio State (9.7%), and Michigan (9.7%) games, we were in shouting distance of the 12% threshold; in actuality, I think we exceeded it. I culled the raw data from the play-by-play statistics from msuspartans.com; I don’t know if they’re trying to not hurt anyone’s feelings, but the statmakers there seem especially loath to deem an incompletion a “dropped pass.” In the OSU game, no dropped passes were recorded; and we were given only one and two in the Iowa and Michigan games, respectively. Surely, there were more than that — I’m willing to bet that if I was able to look at the tape of any of those games, I’d be able to say without a doubt that we were over the 12% threshold in all of those games.

So that still leaves the two outliers — Northwestern and Boston College. I think these can be explained away pretty easily as well — Northwestern’s M.O.E. was still extremely low, and there were no turnovers in that game (!), and conversely, all of our M.O.E. points against Boston College were extremely damaging turnovers — a lost fumble and four interceptions.* Dammit, Brian.

Game-by-game M.O.E. MSU in green, opposition in blue.

*The one other clearly oddball game on that graph above was OSU, where our M.O.E. was significantly lower than theirs. However, if you recall — we didn’t lose that game because of unforced errors, we just couldn’t move the ball on their defense. Todd Boeckman, on the other hand, nearly blew the game for OSU with two awful turnovers that we returned for touchdowns.

The actual M.O.E. percentage aside — I think the raw data pretty clearly shows that, at the very least, Dantonio succeeded in instilling discipline into the team. We committed only 31 offensive penalties all season — 2.4 per game — and 14 of those came in 2 games (Iowa and Pitt). I don’t know exactly what that number was in 2006, but I guarantee it was a lot higher.

We still need to work on our turnover margin a bit: our offense gave the ball away 2 fewer times than the opposition offense did, but one of the advantages of running a more conservative office should be greater ball control and dominance in turnover margin. Devin Thomas and Jehuu Caulcrick accounted for half of our lost fumbles in 2007 . . . but they’ll be replaced by younger players, so that number isn’t necessarily going to improve as a result of their departures. It’s an area which can be improved.

So anyway, I think I’m going to personally keep track of the number of our dropped passes in each game this year, so maybe I can come up with an accurate M.O.E. number. I’m interested to see how accurate this really is — one more thing to look forward to this season. Until then, I’m the guy who spent his entire afternoon figuring out a statistic that really wasn’t all that descriptive or predictive of our season. Blogging is awesome.

Shamed into action.

So . . . right. Thanks to extremely patient commenter Dave, who somehow didn’t forget about us in the intervening 4 months (gah), and to Spartans Weblog. We’ll try to stick with it this time. Seriously.

However, it’s a good a time as any to get back into the action, as the season previews and puff pieces are coming fast and furious — and by in large, they’re sounding a positive chord about our prospects for this season, and more importantly, the general direction of the program. Lord knows that we should all be thankful for the positive press; we haven’t had much of it since the Saban days, and it will, at the very least, contribute to the improving vibe surrounding our program. The Detroit News provided the fluffiest of the fluff last week, when they declared that Dantonio has stabilized the program. I think the general tenor of the article is correct; I’m generally bullish on our program in the long-term, largely because of our vastly-improved facilities and continued success on the recruiting trail. And I’m apparently not the only one; increased demand has led the athletic department to add 3,300 new student seats this year.

Good form, awful shirt.

However, I’m worried about setting expectations too high for this season, for a few reasons. One is recent history: we all remember how John L”ansing” Smith (it pains me to even type those letters) came into town with with a changed attitude and fresh perspective. And he delivered: an unexpected 8-5 in 2003 was a complete reversal of the 2002 debacle. However, his second season delivered nothing but disappointment: a horribly underachieving 5-7 team, which gave us an embarrassing season-opening loss to Rutgers, a game that never happened in Ann Arbor, a blowout in Happy Valley, and a pathetic fourth-quarter capitulation to lose in the first game of our mega-rivalry with Hawaii. This, of course, all happened during my senior year. Dammit.

The one redeeming Saturday in ‘04.

The main reason, of course, is our team itself. On paper, I like our squad. Everyone knows that the two most improbable reasons for our relative success last year are gone*: Devin Thomas is in Washington, and Jonal St.-Dic (snicker) is off doing God knows what; in addition, Caulcrick is gone. But, we still have Javon Ringer, the best running back in the Big Ten not named Beanie, and we’ve got Hoyer, who was actually better than expected last year if you discount the dreadfulness in the bowl game. Nearly everyone else important returns. Deon Curry and especially Mark Dell have an opportunity to step up in a big way, and by all accounts Cincinnati transfer Trevor Anderson has the potential to be a dominant defensive lineman. Greg Jones is moving to middle linebacker and could be the best player on the whole team.

*The one departure I don’t think people are paying enough attention to is Kellen Davis. He had 32 catches and 6 touchdowns last year, and his blocking improved markedly. We have more depth at wide receiver, but I’d be shocked if Charlie Gantt or either of our freshmen at the position are able to be anywhere near as productive. And apologies to Joe Posnanski, the greatest sports blogger/columnist in the universe, for blatantly stealing his asterisk-happy style.

But really, were we all that great last season? We were 2-6 in games decided by a touchdown or less. The two wins were against Pitt and Penn State, and the Pitt win had as much to do with their indefensible coaching as it did with our guys stepping up. (I mean, really, Wannstache, you’re not gonna give LeSean McCoy one single carry in either of your last two drives? Really? Plus, either way, we didn’t do anything to put that game away; we put 17 points on the board, did very little in the second half, and Pitt just sucked too much to catch up.)

But those six losses were agonizing. Everyone knows about the Michigan game; the final score in the OSU game flattered us, and we probably could have won the Wisconsin game, but Camp Randall is an awfully difficult place to play. Either way, you can’t be all that disappointed with either of those three games, because we lost to better teams. We would have won the BC game had it not been for an anomalously awful game from Hoyer. That leaves Northwestern and Iowa, two utterly indefensible losses. If we win those two (as we should have), we’re 9-3 and playing on New Year’s Day. We just didn’t get the job done.

I take significant solace in our performance against PSU in the last home game of the year; I was ecstatic because we finally, finally showed a killer instinct and made big, big plays. (And by “we,” I mean Devin Thomas. Again, problems.) But usually, our problem has been on defense; and namely, with our secondary, which has time and again been absolutely scorched in critical situations. And not just against Michigan — against, again, Northwestern and Iowa. (Remember how Iowa scored to tie the game with 0:00 left? Ok, maybe it’s better to not remember that.)

Remember when our secondary used to, y'know, make plays? That was cool.

The bulk of this is probably best saved for a longer post sometime before the season starts, but I think our relative success or failure this year is going to be determined by how our secondary plays. The Blue Ribbon Preview ($) notes that ours hasn’t been halfway-decent since 2000, when Dantonio actually was our secondary coach. Sadly, not every opposing quarterback is going to suck as much as Anthony Morelli, and no matter how well our offense plays, we’re not going to win close games if teams with decent passing offenses are continually able to shred our secondary in the fourth quarter. It has to be a major emphasis both in coaching and recruiting, especially since our returning starters at cornerback are Kendall Davis-Clark and Ross Weaver: two guys that Greg Matthews and Mario Manningham embarrassed in turn last November.

So, I think the upshot of all of this is: I love that we’re getting decent publicity, and I think it’s great that the aura of failure that has enveloped this program for so long is dissipating even a little bit. However, let’s keep our expectations realistic for this year. We’re not going to win the conference, and we’re almost certainly not going to finish in the top 3. JLS left the program in better shape than Bobby Williams did, but the cupboard still isn’t very full, and we have some serious deficiencies that the best teams are going to be able to exploit. Eight wins would be an excellent return and absolutely something for the best recruiting class we’ve had in years to build on. Let’s get it done.

Back soon.

So, I think I made the silly mistake of firing up this blog before we really had the free time to maintain it properly. We’ll be back in a couple of months to talk football. Pinky swear.

Various and Sundry.

Basketball: Should be a very interesting game tonight against Illinois, and it’s really one of the most important games of the season yet for our team. The Illini are a better team than their record indicates…but they’ve obviously struggled quite a bit this season. Obviously, beggars can’t be choosers, and any road win for us is big; however, a win tonight could be especially important on a psychological level, since nobody on the team has ever won in Champaign. (Our last win down there was in 2002; for some perspective of how long ago that was, consider that our leading scorer in the game was Adam Ballinger, the major story was Marcus Taylor’s concussion, and there’s a good chance I watched the game on the big TV in the Case Hall cafeteria while eating smiley fries and salisbury steak, ha.)

Even if Illinois was able to play their best lineup, I’d still say that we should win, because we simply have the better team. However, Brian Randle is out for the rest of the season and Raymar Morgan should have a field day. Raymar only scored 10 points the last time around while being guarded by Randle, before eventually fouling out. This time, there’s no excuse. As kj said, it’s unlikely that MSU will have the opportunity to run-’n-gun like we were able to against Indiana; we’ll have to get our points in the halfcourt set, and it’s an excellent opportunity for Raymar to assert himself down low in a meaningful way–something he hasn’t done consistently since much earlier in the season.

Winning tonight would allow us to gain some confidence heading into the conference tournament, and it’s especially important to do so now because winning in Columbus on Sunday won’t be easy. We usually play well there (like last season, when Neitzel scored 29 and we really could have won) but OSU has played themselves back onto the tournament bubble by beating Wisconsin, and surely the game has higher stakes for them than it will for us.

Bottom line, tonight’s much more important than your average midweek game against a bottom-of-the-standings team. Turnovers have killed us on the road this season, but we’ve done a much better job of hanging onto the ball the past couple of weeks (even during the disappointing game in Madison). I think the Mr. Hyde version of MSU shows up on the road for the first time since the Minnesota game, and we take it 61-53.

One last thing from the Indiana game:

Not the best picture quality, but nice nonetheless.

Football: Exciting recruiting news continues to pour in, as yesterday Battle Creek Central junior running back Larry Caper verbally committed to MSU ($), turning down offers from Michigan, Iowa, Purdue, and others in the process. This means that we’ve now received commitments from 3 of the top 5 players in Michigan for the 2009 class, and 5 of the top 10: two running backs, a quarterback, a wide receiver, and a linebacker. Paul knows much more about recruiting than I do, and so I’m sure he’ll be weighing in soon…but this is really fantastic. Not only are these guys talented, but they’re from Michigan, and that we’re doing so well getting in-state commitments can only bode well for the future of our program.

Hockey: I’ll try to have a longer post about this either tomorrow or sometime this weekend, but the CCHA playoffs open tonight, as UNO takes on UAF. State, of course, has the weekend off, and will host either Lake State, UAF, UNO, BGSU, or Northern next weekend at Munn. Northern swept us pretty convincingly in Marquette a month ago, so obviously I’m rooting for OSU to take them out. Either way, however, ours is a team which has obviously performed in the postseason and should have plenty of confidence after finishing the regular season on a 5-1-0 run. If the seeding holds in the tournament, we’d have to play Miami in the semifinals. That’s no small order, of course, but I’ve been itching for a second chance against them after we didn’t bother showing up in the two games earlier this year…

Evening Folks!

This is an amendment to Ben’s introduction, nay Mission Statement, of what will shortly become the envy of the Michigan State blogosphere.  As Ben stated, this blog should focus primarily on Michigan State football, but I feel in the meantime until the season starts we’ll cover a wide variety of topics we’re both interested such as the NHL, March Madness , recruiting, baseball and my shameless addiction to reality television.  I’m sure we’ll also fill this space with random memories of Michigan State, shameless lists ranking things such as East Lansing bars and tailgating hotspots, and great restaurants throughout America seeing as Ben and I have an unhealthy obsession with food.  Hopefully I’ll cut my teeth on posts about the new season of The Hills and the Red Wings’ failure to make it out of the Campbell Conference, so by the time the football season rolls around I’ll be blogging with such a vim it’ll knock your knickerbockers off.

Now a little about myself…Ben and I entered college at the same time, but I decided I needed a few more senior years under my belt before I could leave such a fine institution.  After several victory laps I officially graduated from MSU in 2007 with a degree in Political Theory.  My Poly Theory background has landed me a plum job at J. Crew where I’ve actually been employed for the better part of four years now.  You need chinos?  I can help you out.  So to wrap it all up I live at home with my parents, I work at the mall that’s ten minutes from my house, I like sports, and I like to tell people my opinion via the interwebs.  I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Izzo rumors.

Spartan fans seem to be half up-in-arms, half no-freaking-way about this blog post from the Indy Star, which lists Izzo as a potential candidate for the IU vacancy. The specter of Izzo leaving State would be unpalatable regardless of his destination; that he would be leaving for another Big Ten program would certainly be insult to injury. Hysteria aside, I think there’s no way this ends up happening.

First of all, God love ‘im, but the man has an ego. This was pretty clearly borne out during the most farcical portions of our football coaching search two Decembers ago, when it didn’t seem entirely impossible that Izzo’s office would be moving a quarter-mile east on Shaw Lane. He could have shot down the rumors entirely with a simple statement; but I think it’s pretty clear that he was immensely enjoying the ridiculous idea that his coaching genius transcended basketball. Anyway, his ego is stroked at MSU to a degree he’d probably never attain at IU. Quite rightly, Izzo holds near-deity status in East Lansing; while the past few seasons certainly have been disappointing, his overall record is unimpeachable, and the MSU basketball program has been more successful under him than it has been at any other time in its history. That success has brought him a sort of invincibility amongst the fan base; coaches at other schools would have been subject to far more criticism than Izzo faced after the debacles at Iowa and Penn State earlier this season. He’s earned residual goodwill; if he decided to leave, he’d start from scratch again (aside from the first-year honeymoon, of course). At the risk of being too psychoanalytical, I think he enjoys being adored at State too much to consider leaving. If he decided to leave for another program in the same conference, all of that adoration would turn to absolute scorn.

Nor is Indiana an ideal job at this point in time. It’s pretty safe to say that the program is going to face significant sanctions in the wake of Kelvin Sampson’s indiscretions. It’s purely speculative as to what the sanctions will entail, and college coaches have been burned before by sanctions which were more severe than expected. (Dennis Franchione at Alabama and Tommy Amaker at Michigan come to mind; it didn’t help that both of them were crappy coaches, however.) It’s very difficult to imagine Izzo abandoning a stable, and great, situation at MSU for uncertainty at IU.

Absent sanctions, the IU job is at least as attractive as the MSU one. While State probably has better facilities, IU easily has stronger tradition, is at least our equal in terms of fan base support, and probably offers greater recruiting prospects. The prospect of sanctions certainly makes the job more unattractive, but it’d still be a great gig for someone like Tom Crean. I certainly would rather he stay at Marquette, because I would love to see him at the helm in East Lansing someday; but if I were him, I’d jump to IU without a second thought.

Anyway, I’m really not all that concerned about this; the likelihood of Izzo leaving State is minuscule. I just wish he’d learn the lesson from last December’s charade and confirm his intentions as soon as possible.

Here we go.

This blog was created for two reasons:

1. Like any other blog, for selfish reasons. We’ve discussed our thrills, frustrations, agonies, ecstasies, and all other emotions in between for years amongst ourselves and with others; we might as well do it in front of the whole world (or, at least, whomever stumbles on by…).

2. More to the point, because not enough people already have done so. While many schools (including several in the Big Ten) have diverse and excellent representation within the blogosphere, the pickings for our beloved Alma Mater are comparatively slim. So if very few others are doing it, why don’t we?

This site will almost certainly focus primarily on Michigan State football, and to a lesser extent, on basketball and hockey…with occasional digressions into the Tigers, and whatever else seems interesting. The entire thing is a giant experiment, and we’ll see how it goes; hopefully it’s a good time for both us and you.

For now,

A bit about myself: both of my parents are State graduates; even though I grew up in New Jersey, I decided at age 8 that I wanted to go to MSU, and never really wavered. I graduated in 2005, and moved to DC, where I worked in politics for 3 years. I’m currently a law student in Chicago, where I routinely ignore my studies in order to head back to East Lansing for MSU games as frequently as possible.

I’m sure Paul will be by shortly to introduce himself…