Sports

Tiny Crowd For Michigan State Spring Game Proves Michigan Is King For Football

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Michigan State Football Spring Game Crowd
© Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Michigan State concluded the first spring practice period of the first college football season with Pat Fitzgerald as head coach with its spring game on Saturday. The Spartans drew a tiny crowd.

It was actually a decent turnout for an exhibition scrimmage but it looked pathetic compared to their rivals just down the road.

Both college football programs were starting a new era with a new head coach so is was not an unfair comparison. A lot more people showed up to watch the Michigan Wolverines.

Michigan State drew a small crowd for its college football spring game.

It has been five years since the Michigan State Spartans finished the regular season with a winning record. Mel Tucker finished at 5-7 and 4-8 in 2022 and 2023 after an 11-win season in 2021. Jonathan Smith also went 5-7 and 4-8 in back-to-back years during his brief two-year tenure. Not great.

Smith was fired at end of last season. Pat Fitzgerald was hired as his replacement.

The controversial head coach turned Northwestern into a relevant program. Michigan State is a huge step up from Northwestern in terms of branding, name recognition and resources.

Thus, Fitzgerald is expected to win. There is a lot of excitement on the banks of the Red Cedar. The people of East Lansing believe the Spartans will be back in the top-25 sooner than later.

However, they did not seem to care about their first opportunity to get a glimpse of the new era. Michigan State drew a modest crowd for its spring game on Saturday.

The players did not have a lot of fans to greet them as they came out of the tunnel.

The crowd (which the video team did its best to cover) was mostly contained to the middle three sections of the lower bowl at a stadium with a maximum capacity of 73,866.

Those who did attend were treated to the first-ever dizzy bat hot dog race in Spartan Stadium history. Those who stayed home really missed out.

All things considered, the crowd could’ve been a lot worse. It could’ve been like the pathetic crowd at Coastal Carolina. It was a decent turnout for a chilly Saturday in April at a basketball school. Only the most dedicated fanbases in college football pack the entire stadium for the spring game. Most don’t.

The Wolverines little brothered the Spartans.

Michigan State held its spring showcase just a few hours before their biggest rivals. Michigan drew a larger crowd for its spring game.

This was the scene as the team wrapped up its warmups:

Mind you, The Big House is 1.4X bigger than Spartan Stadium so the crowd appears more dispersed. Attendance was still much higher.

The Wolverines are also entering their first season with a new head coach after the ouster of Sherrone Moore. There is an equal or greater amount of buzz for the college football season in Ann Arbor than in East Lansing. The fanbase showed up accordingly. They are fired up for Kyle Whittingham.

To be honest — the crowd at Michigan Stadium was not as big as it could be. Demand for spring games continues to decline. People would rather watch the replay on their televisions at home. It’s not the same.

Still, Michigan proved it is Michigan State’s little brother. The Spartans’ spring game crowd was tiny.