Footnotes on fireworks and football

College football returned to East Lansing with touchdowns and familiar touchpoints in equal measure

With an early, teasing fall chill ionizing the atmosphere, college football’s return sparked and crackled¹ back to life in East Lansing last Friday night.

There’s nothing like the first game of the season.

The first-half fireworks, which propelled MSU to a 24-0 lead over Western Michigan, faded in the second half as the Spartans dutifully swept up and swept out the Broncos for a workmanlike 24-6 victory.

But even with a dull second half, college football’s opening day is unlike any other sport.

For example: baseball’s opening day is great in its own way. The bat’s first crack declares another cold winter defeated, and that warmer days lie ahead.

But the excitement of college football’s opener is different. The first game is wrapped up in personal history and memory for many who come back to campus. Friendships are renewed, familiar grass is underfoot, and comforting beverages are imbibed.

Baseball’s opening day is about renewal. College football’s opening day is about reconnection.

It’s personal

A few weeks ago I purchased a handful of Spartan items² in a local sporting goods store.

“State fan, eh,” the kid behind the counter said, the drizzle of disdain in his tone. “I can’t relate.”

No, kid, I suppose you can’t.

College football at Michigan State is about so much more than rooting for a helmet. It’s about our own pasts in East Lansing and, now, for me, my daughter’s present. It’s about my friends with their son on the field in Green and White. For so many of us, personal ties bind us to this fall ritual far more deeply than just tuning in to a game on Saturday afternoons.

College football is unique in that way. The National Football League may be bigger. But college football runs deeper.

It’s ok to root for a helmet. But when it’s a school you attended, where the ties are personal, the scoreboard you keep is about much more than touchdowns and field goals.

Maybe someday you’ll understand, too, kid.

Munn Field, resurrected

Adding to the evening’s delight was a surprise unveiled in an announcement earlier this week:

The Munn Field Tailgate is back.³

Once upon a 1990s tailgate, Munn Field, sitting south of Munn Ice Arena and west of Spartan Stadium, was the epicenter of the tailgating experience.

(I’m sorry I can’t credit this photo. Kudos to whomever took it!)

But things got out of hand⁴, and a ban on kegs at Munn Field in 1994 was followed in 1998 by a scorched-earth full ban on alcohol at Munn Field, which killed the scene and scattered the students.

This year, that draconian overreach has been corrected. The school administration is progressing slowly, but the 517 Beer Garden at Munn Field, sprinkled in with a few select tailgaters, is a good start.

Ironically, it took two people who came from outside MSU to become president (Kevin Guskiewicz) and athletic director (J Batt) to right this long-time wrong.

Welcome back, Munn Field Tailgate. Too many Spartans didn’t know what they were missing.

The Munn Tailgate renaissance was the bow on an idyllic college football evening. Even the Broncos can’t complain too much. A big payday and a national TV game isn’t a bad way for a storied MAC program to start the year, and the night was an even better way for Spartans to reconnect with all the years and memories that came before.

Photo credit: My daughter! Nice shot from the upper deck.

1. Quite literally, as it turns out Spartan Stadium is now armed with firework munitions that blast into the sky after scores and victories. (Spare me your jokes about not needing to stockpile many rockets.)

2. A painfully common occurrence.

3. Slowly. Cautiously. But it is back.

4. I might have left a whole couch there after a game in 1995. Allegedly. Hard to describe the vast wasteland left behind by the wasted in Munn Field in those days.