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By Colton Wesley

If the College Football Playoff committee continues to favor only power conference schools, the Group of Five conferences should follow through on something they’ve reportedly considered doing: making their own alternate playoff. Power Five schools refuse to schedule good Group of Five and independent opponents because they know those teams are good enough to upset them and derail their Playoff aspirations, leaving these outsider teams with no recourse to qualify for themselves.

One of the best games this season was the Coastal Carolina-BYU game, hastily scheduled at the end of the season between two undefeated teams. Coastal went on to lose to Liberty in overtime in the Cure Bowl. Cincinnati lost to Georgia by three in the Peach Bowl. These are good teams playing good games, given no chance to play for a championship. I’d much rather watch these teams play each other for a title the Power Five are too scared to play for than see them wasted in the Boca Raton Bowl.

By Colton Wesley

During the regular season, I will watch just about any college football game, and there were some doozies this season. The Western Michigan lateral that almost worked, the Notre Dame-Clemson shootout and the BYU-Coastal Carolina game that came down to literally a single yard were all highlights of a shortened season.

The postseason, on the other hand, sucked. And I’m not talking about the three blowouts in the Playoff.

Outside of the CFP, none of the other bowl games have any meaningful stakes. Teams are playing literal exhibition games for a trophy with a sponsor’s name on it, one that may or not be filled with Cheez-Its. Even if the teams are good, coaches leaving for new jobs and draft-bound players sitting out compound how unimportant the exercise already is.

Until the College Football Playoff expands to include more teams, specifically more conference champions and undefeated Group of Five schools, the postseason will continue to be nothing but meaningless walkthroughs for sponsors and wealthy alumni.

By Colton Wesley

James Harden is on the trade block in Houston, but a team that makes him their centerpiece would not become more likely to win a championship. In fact, it’s the opposite—because of usage rate.

A player’s usage rate is the percentage of a team’s offensive possessions that end with that player either taking a shot or losing a turnover, and there’s a strong correlation between having a high usage rate and watching someone else win the Finals.

The players with the top 47 single seasons for usage rate all failed to win a championship. Harden is on that list four times. He’s led the league twice, including last season, and no usage rate leader has won a title since Michael Jordan in 1998. 

Given that Harden insists on dominating possession even with another bona fide star on his team like Russell Westbrook, it seems unlikely that he will ever hoist a trophy at season’s end unless he decides to give up the rock.

By: Colton Wesley  

Matthew Stafford is doubtlessly the best quarterback the Detroit Lions have had since Bobby Layne, but as the team heads into rebuild mode once again, his future in Detroit is more uncertain than ever.

The Lions will soon hire a new front office and coaching staff and the new regime might want to bring in their own guy to quarterback the team. While the 32-year-old is still very talented, his near-$35 million cap hit in 2021 would be nearly 19% of the team’s payroll. Several teams in the league would probably love to bring a veteran gunslinger on board to help them push for a title, so Stafford’s trade equity is certainly high enough for the Lions to hear offers.

It’s becoming evident, however, that as far as his Detroit career goes, Stafford will likely join Lions greats like Lem Barney, Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson as players whose talents the franchise was never able to translate into a championship.

By: Colton Wesley  

To say that the Lions’ season has now gone off the rails after the firing of special teams coordinator Brayden Coombs is not accurate. The season went off the rails long ago and has been lost somewhere in Manistee National Forest for weeks. 

Whether Coombs was sacked strictly for his “rogue” fake punt call in Sunday’s loss to the Tennessee Titans or if his dismissal was a long time coming due to friction with the coaching staff is neither known nor particularly interesting. The truth of the matter is this: the Lions are—for the fourth time in 12 years—going to try to “change the culture” of the club.

The worst part of all this? The Lions had a winning culture under Jim Caldwell. The players loved him, the team made the playoffs twice and won more games than they lost under a non-interim coach for the first time since 1972. As yet another rebuild begins, Lions fans will remain skeptical—as they should.

By: Colton Wesley  

It’s still preseason, but Sekou Doumbouya is starting to look like a first-round-level player for the Detroit Pistons. The second-year forward earned a double-double off the bench with 10 rebounds and a team-high 23 points in the team’s exhibition win over the New York Knicks on Sunday. Doumbouya had a modest rookie season in Detroit, averaging 6.4 points and 3.1 rebounds for the Pistons in the pandemic-shortened 2019-2020 season.

Doumbouya will be expected to take on a bigger role for a Pistons team looking to return to being competitive. The team acquired several new players this offseason, including fellow bigs Mason Plumlee, Jeremi Grant and Jahlil Okafor, in an effort to upgrade a squad that has sputtered into irrelevance in recent seasons. The team acknowledged early on that Doumbouya was a long-term prospect with a lot of development ahead of him. If Sunday night’s performance is any indication, he seems to be on schedule.

By: Colton Wesley

For Michigan State men’s basketball fans, the scariest thing about #3 Iowa's 93-80 win over #16 North Carolina on Tuesday isn't that Luka Garza looks like a Naismith candidate, but that his team looks like a title contender.

Garza, an all-Big Ten senior center, scored a season-low 16 points but picked up 14 rebounds and four blocks, winning the battle in the paint against UNC’s fleet of formidable big men. The rest of his team picked up the scoring, pouring in 17 threes as the Hawkeyes undid a second-half Tar Heel comeback to remain undefeated.

There are still questions about if the Hawkeyes can play defense at a championship level, but If Iowa's high-scoring ways continue and Garza keeps playing well, they will be a legitimate threat to the Spartans' attempts at their fourth straight conference title. With Iowa scheduled to play #1 Gonzaga on Dec. 19 and MSU twice next semester, the Hawkeyes will have their chances to prove themselves.

By: Colton Wesley

Many teams bounce back after a coach is fired and the Lions did just that with a 34-30 win over the Bears on Sunday. Interim head coach Darrell Bevell will doubtlessly be treating this as an audition, but it remains to be seen if he can resolve the issues that plagued the team’s performance under Matt Patricia.

Offensively, Bevell gave Matthew Stafford the green light to open up the passing game and the veteran quarterback responded by racking up a season-high 402 yards and three touchdowns. The ground game, however, continues to be anemic and seems unlikely to get better if Bevell insists on giving Adrian Peterson most of the carries. The inefficient defense is also concerning as the Lions gave up 30 points and 389 total yards to a poor Bears offense, led by the floundering Mitchell Trubisky.

Unfortunately, while dismissing Matt Patricia was a step in the right direction, the team feels the absence of players alienated by Patricia like Darius Slay and Quandre Diggs and it’s going to take a while to repair the damage done to this team's roster by the Quinn/Patricia era.