Stay calm and be thankful you're a Spartan

Between the Football Season of Interminable Agony, the Conference Expansion of Blatant Money Grubbing, and the Basketball Early Season of Continuous Injuries, this has been the Great Autumn of Spartan Discontent (four fake capitalized terms for the price of one!). Still, today is a day to focus on what we're thankful for, and we still have quite a bit in that department.

My top ten:

10. The privilege of watching the whirling, leaping, stiff-arming, multiple-defender plowing Le'Veon Bell, for at least one more game.

9. Aaron Burbridge, AKA The Future.

8. Pat Narduzzi, the man who has built a legitimate top-five defense and will, we hope, take an extremely cautious approach to finding jusssst the right head coaching gig.

7. Enormous scoreboards, even if there haven't been that many spectacular highlights to show on them yet.

6. A football program whose worst moments now at least still involve playing for a bowl game.

5. Mark Hollis, an AD who may overreach at times (looking at you, quasi-ancient Greek font) but whose reaches have clearly helped push MSU toward the national spotlight.

4. Branden Dawson's ACL from the future.

3. The glimpses we've already seen (in varying quantities) of what Harris, Valentine, and Costello are going to mean to the MSU basketball program over the next several years.

2. Keith Appling, and the multiple "Apples!" moments he's already provided this season.

1. Tom Izzo. Always Tom Izzo.

We at TOC headquarters, meanwhile, remain thankful for, you, our gentle readers (less gentle of late, but still on the civil side). What else do all of you have to add to the list?