Michigan State Football: Almost everything about the Penn State game is wrong

Michigan State basketball plays on neutral courts so why can’t Michigan State football do so and it be well-received by Spartan fans? It is not the same and here is why.

To review, last season the Spartan basketball team played at neutral sites against Gonzaga, Kentucky, Alabama, Oregon, and Rutgers. (the Portland game was not played on a neutral site). If you include the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA tournament then the Spartans played Ohio State, USC, Marquette, and Kansas State on neutral courts as well.

Excluding the Big Ten and NCAA Tournament games because they were not regular season scheduled games and the Rutgers game because, like MSU football, they gave up a home game to play at a neutral site, then that means out of the remaining games, the Spartans played four out of the 29 other games on a neutral court. That means MSU basketball played just over 13% of those games on a neutral site. This does not in any way compare to Michigan State football giving up a home in-conference game and playing at a neutral site. The Spartans will now play six true home games, five road games, and one neutral site game.

It would be one thing if, for example, for a non-conference series between Michigan State and Notre Dame, that one year they played at Solider Field in Chicago and the following year they play at Ford Field in Detroit. That is a fair and equal agreement between two schools that benefit both programs. The move from Spartan Stadium to Ford Field benefits Penn State more than it benefits Michigan State in terms of decreasing the likelihood that the Spartans can pull off the upset.

Then there is the argument about Michigan State football games being played at Ford Field benefits the Spartans overall. As mentioned earlier in the article, the last football game at Ford Field only had 36 thousand fans back in 2010, when the Spartans played FAU. The last non-tournament basketball game that Michigan State basketball played in was even less attended.

Back in 2009, Michigan State played North Carolina and the game only had 25,267 in attendance. On paper, that number is not bad at all for a college basketball game but the expectation was that it would be packed like it was in 2003 when the Spartans hosted Kentucky. Not only did the game not meet the expectations of people attending the game, North Carolina defeated Michigan State by 35 points. If that game was held at the Breslin Center in front of the Izzone student section, the Spartans would more than likely still have lost but it would have been a more competitive game.

There is no recent evidence that suggests that Michigan State football games being played at Ford Field greatly benefits the Spartans overall.