Staudt: Izzo gets to 500 wins with no end in sight

After his first two seasons as Michigan State’s head basketball coach, many would have doubted whether Tom Izzo would last at least 21 seasons. Even Jud Heathcote’s reign ended at 19 once his retirement age became a factor. But Izzo is a young 60 and now he has 500 wins and 18 consecutive trips to the NCAA tournament. He is resolved to win a second NCAA title, to separate him from numerous coaches who have won it all one time. He may just have the team to do it too. I don’t see any other monster teams out there even though it’s still just November. But the Spartans seem to have depth and only Maryland and Purdue impress me as Big Ten teams who can give MSU a run in the conference this winter. The rest are all flawed. Surely some luck is needed along the way. How many more wins for Izzo? He won’t break the all time record but in the Big Ten he continues to pass a number of milestone victories with no end in sight.

RANK AND FILE: I can’t believe the College Football Playoff committee meets every week in November to update the standings. Seems like a complete waste of time. The weekly listings have no relevance since the teams all have noteworthy games in the future and will move up or down depending on whether they win or lose. The controversy will come Dec. 6 when the final four teams and pairings are announced. There are sure to be several frustrated teams who are left out with fans who won’t want to make the trip to what they’ll consider a lesser bowl game. My system uses the current bowl games but numbers eight teams - five automatic power five conference champions and three wild card teams can fill out the field which must include at least one “mid major” Div. 1 team.

FUTURE GOPHER: Lansing Catholic High School quarterback Tony Poljan now moves on to play at Minnesota and leaves some incredible career prep statistics behind. He ran for 3,044 yards in his career and passed for another 6,179 and he also threw for 93 touchdowns. He completed 57.5 percent of his passes. His teammate Tony Palmer also finishes a noteworthy career with 1,790 yards rushing and 33 touchdowns and he had 1,935 receiving yards which included 19 touchdown receptions. Catholic has rebuilding to do next season and it will be interesting to see who replaces both.

PRIDE OF STOCKBRIDGE: Poljan shared all state honors in divisions 5-6 this past week with Stockbridge’s Mason Gee Montgomery. His final numbers could be staggering since he already has broken the single season touchdown pass record with 51 and he still has his senior year left to play. Ironically it was another Lansing Catholic quarterback who held the record-- Cooper Rush, who had 48. Rush has one more year at Central Michigan. And Pewamo Westphalia’s Jared Smith already has 5,000 rushing yards with another season to play and at his pace he could join the national leaders at this time next year.

SPARTANS WILL: John Shinsky will be honored on the field at next Saturday night’s Big Ten championship football game in the second quarter. The 1973 MSU football captain was named the Big Ten’s 2015 Humanitarian Award winner this past week, captured a year ago by former Michigan quarterback Brian Griese. The latter is the 2015 Big Ten Leadership award winner and the two have never met. Griese is active in numerous charities and Shinsky is about to oversee the seventh year of his children’s orphanage in Matamoros, Mexico.

TOUGH TICKETS: For whatever reason the Big Ten has reduced the ticket allotment for next Saturday’s championship football game from 15,000 per school to 10,000. And the prices aren’t cheap either - best seats go for $175 apiece and the cheapest are $80. Students, who have a limited allotment, pay $40. With less tickets available the schools have pressure to divvy up their allotment with some fans obviously upset if they get left out. Seems like big time college football more and more is not for those in the middle class.

BOWL BULGE: How long can ESPN keep supporting the majority of the 40 bowl games the network sponsors? ESPN is in a huge financial crunch which has been widely supported. And why would 40 bowl games be approved? That requires 80 of the 128 division one schools to finish at least 6-6 to avoid a losing record and become eligible. The original mission of a bowl game was to give deserving teams a reward for a very good regular season. Those days seem long gone and many of these upcoming holiday matchups will feature stadiums with mostly empty seats.

TIPOFF TIME: Girls high school basketball begins Monday and the boys’ regular season begins the following week. The CAAC Blue division looks very competitive on the boys side with East Lansing, Holt, Sexton, Jackson and Everett jumping out at me as teams who have good returning players and optimistic hopes for a big winter.

ARTIFICIAL GAMESAVER: The high school football semifinals featured 16 games all played on field turf. The MHSAA does not require natural grass for semifinal games but prefers it and with all that snow flying around the field turf saved the day. Only one game was postponed for a day - Chelsea vs. Coldwater in Jackson. And while conditions were hardly perfect, at least the games were played and the fans still showed up.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Hard to believe - Marcus Taylor turned 34 this past week. He was Mr. Basketball in 2000 after leading Waverly to the class A state basketball title. He never made the NBA after leaving MSU early but he was still one of the best high school players in this area. By contrast Denzel Valentine has stayed at MSU through his senior year and it will be interesting to see if that influences his NBA chances.

BACK IN THE DAY: I still say the original Big Ten format for the football season worked better. No bye week and end the season the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Half the Big Ten students now have to decide whether to go home and not use one of their tickets. The weather is always much more iffy. And the teams headed to the Big Ten title game would have two weeks to prepare without negative influence on the playoff selection committee. MSU’s bye week next year is in the second week of September. Make any sense?