That's per Rocco Miller, but nothing further than that yet. I'm betting fans are hoping it won't be James Madison again. We will provide an update soon as we have more details.

We have finally reach the 7th and final installment of my annual math-driven college football preview.

In this installment, I dig back through the data and compare is to the current betting lines to look for potentially good bets. As I have stated before, I don't actually bet on sports, but the math and the analysis of the betting lines are super interesting to me. But the accuracy of my predictions is highly linked to the accuracy of the collection of preseason rankings (from Phil Steele, Athlon, Lindy's, SP+, and ESPN) relative to Vegas. Sometime these picks work out and sometimes they don't. The good news (for me) is that I have fun either way.


I hope that you enjoyed this series. This is my second favorite project of the year behind my annual March Madness bracket analysis. Finally, as my title suggests, this piece is also foreshadowing of the week Bad Betting Advice column that I have been writing for a while, both here and as during my stint with The Only Colors.

It's game week, Spartan fans. Let's the games begin.

Down in Tampa, and aside from half my hotel being filled with Cos-play girls over the weekend - I didn’t even know that was a thing, but Y’Bor was bumping.

With that said, the boys of summer took down the Chinese after navigating their way through the losers bracket. They defined toughness and resilience and did it with their backs against the wall in one and done status after dropping down to the losers bracket after the second round.

On top of that, they showed immense empathy at the end consoling the other team who had faked getting hit by a pitch and pretending to be injured by the base runner after dropping the ball. They took the high road instinctively. Got to be proud of those young men.

It's the 20th anniversary of National Dog today. Feel free to drop a picture of your four-legged friend.

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"Founded in 2004 by Animal Welfare Advocate, Author and Pet Lifestyle Expert, Colleen Paige, National Dog Day celebrates all breeds, mixed and pure and serves to help galvanize the public to recognize the number of dogs that need to be rescued each year, either from public shelters, rescues and pure breed rescues. National Dog Day honors family dogs and dogs that work selflessly to save lives, keep us safe and bring comfort. Dogs put their lives on the line every day - protecting our families and homes, for their law enforcement partner, for their blind companion, for the disabled, for our freedom and safety by detecting bombs and drugs and helping to locate and rescue victims of accidents and tragedy."

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ROSEMONT, Ill. (Aug. 26, 2024) — The Big Ten Conference on Monday announced new football tiebreaking procedures for the 2024 Discover Big Ten Championship Game, the first in Big Ten history to match the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the overall conference standings.

If two teams are tied in the Big Ten standings (conference games only) the following steps will be taken until a determination is made (condensed version below with full version listed here):

1. The tied teams will be compared based on head-to-head matchups during the regular season.
2. The tied teams will be compared based on record against all common conference opponents.
3. The tied teams will be compared based on record against common opponents with the best conference record and proceeding through the common conference opponents based on their order of finish within the conference standings.
4. The tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents.
5. The representative will be chosen based on the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.
6. The representative will be chosen by random draw among the tied teams conducted by the Commissioner or designee.

For Additional information, including the process for three-or-more tied teams, click here.

The 2024 Discover Big Ten Championship Game will be held on Saturday, December 7, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and will be broadcast for the first time on CBS. The winner will represent the conference as the Automatic Qualifier (AQ) to the College Football Playoff.

The Big Ten Football season kicks off this weekend with all 18 teams in action, beginning with three contests on Thursday evening, two on Friday, 12 on Saturday and one on Sunday. The 2024 campaign will be the first to feature a full slate of Big Ten games on three broadcast networks (CBS, FOX, NBC) supported by exclusive cable and streaming coverage all season on Big Ten Network, FS1 and Peacock.

Release courtesy of the Big Ten Conference.

The Film Room with @glassman12 is back, just like the college football season, with a look at what Florida Atlantic will bring against the Spartans this Friday night at Spartan Stadium.

Katin Houser takes shots at MSU: the offensive scheme, Tucker, and MSU fans...

"It's totally different between ECU and Michigan State. They really want their team to win, so you are either doing well or getting ridiculed on social media."

"With ECU, I feel no matter what we do, we are going to have support from the fans. I feel the love and support is totally different."

"Last year (at MSU) was a dumpster fire with the coach being fired. As an offense, we didn't have an identity. We had a bunch of good players, and we didn't know how to use them in the right way. I was scrambling, trying to understand the offense and execute at my best with everything going on. We were struggling with when to use certain plays and use certain players, and the identity of the Big Ten and Michigan State is to pound the rock and run the ball, and we could not do that at all, at any point of the season. So it was relying on the pass game which we didn't focus on much."


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I know family and friends of mine that don't have as much interest or excitement for college football as they used to because of NIL, transfer portal, etc.

So I'm curious what everyone here thinks...

On a scale of 1-10 (1 being not excited at all, 10 being ecstatic), how excited are you to watch Michigan State football this season?

Kugler was among six people arrested in a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation undercover operation. and yes he played for both Harbaugh and Brady Hoke.​

Some important things to know before the football season gets underway.

@austenflores breaks down three things he wants to see in Game One against Florida Atlantic:

Good piece here by Ross Dellenger:


I think this will be great if they eliminate the spring transfer portal window. Ideally in this format, by spring practices, the rosters will be set for the season.

We are approaching the finish line here with the penultimate installment of my preseason series. I was hoping to wrap everything up before the Week 0 kickoff, but Day Job and life got a bit away from me this week.

Today I put the pieces together to project the 12-team playoff field and how it would play out. I am not that concerned about the accuracy of my picks. Instead, I wanted to go through an exercise using one feasible full season scenario and see where things would land.

There are a few really interesting conclusions that I have come to. First, while the four-bye structure does make sense, it creates some other issues that I don't honestly think that the committee is smart enough to fully realize. This is going to create some potentially interesting consequences that I explore below.

The way to potentially fix the issue is to allow or encourage the committee to move the at-large teams around a bit on the seed list, specifically to balance things out and to reduce the potential for rematches in the earlier rounds. I think that there is a good chance that they will do this, as there is evidence in the past that they have done something similar in the NY6 era This is why MSU faced Baylor in the Cotton Bowl is 2014 instead of playing Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl. The committee switched Mississippi State and Michigan State in the final poll when neither team played a game in order to create a better NY6 matchups. They did something similar last year to avoid putting current Big Ten opponents Ohio State and Oregon in a bowl together.

These examples give me hope.

Anyway, as usual enjoy!

In our final position preview, we break down the special teams unit. Catch the position group on the homepage here:

MSU added a "C" to the uniforms this year. Can anyone older recall if we have done this before for football?
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Some news and notes on MSU’s WRs and DBs:

Forbes, who will be the first Spartan to play in the US Open:

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Matsuno:

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Tennis, anyone?

Meet incoming Michigan State freshman and tennis star Matt Forbes. He will be the first Spartan ever to play in the US Open.

Find out how he made his way to East Lansing and what the future holds for one of the newest Spartans in the latest contribution from @Brendanmoore101

Super sad news, but important to share.

Michigan State defensive back Armorion Smith's mother, Gala, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in the fall of 2022. She's been battling for about a year and a half now. Unfortunately, she has been given a terminal prognosis of just 3-6 months.

The GoFundMe with more context on her cancer and prognosis is linked below.

Think about this: Connor Stalions matched EVERY play and EVERY formation to a SIGNAL and handed the info to either DC Jesse Minter or Sherrone Moore so they could change the play call before the snap, which changed the integrity of the game and college football.

But wait, UM is mad because Iowa tampered with the injured QB they did not want and gave him another chance.