Mr. Upnorth and I attended the OSU/MSU game last night for the first time and I want to commend the Sparty's for the welcoming environment at the stadium and at the parking/tailgating venues.

First, let me say that Buckeye Nation travels very well. I was amazed at the amount of OSU fans attending the game. Lansing is an overnight for most OSU fans unless they are living in Michigan like us, or in the Toledo area. The entire Northeast quadrant of Spartan Stadium was 85% red, and although we were in the Northwest quadrant, we had at least a dozen Buckeye fans sitting alongside us. 

The student section in Spartan Stadium is loud. I mean, loud. They have preferred seating that consumes the entire southeast quadrant of the stadium. They wait in line in cattle gate fashion hours before the game to get their seating, I don't know if it was stadium or reserved seating, guessing it's first come first serve.

Parking was fantastic. Lot 89 is a 4,000-space lot covered with solar panels that shade your vehicle. Spaces are a little tight, but our Silverado 1500 fit fine. $20 to park and a free full size city bus to take you directly to the stadium that ran for three hours prior and two hours after and there had to be 30-40 of them running constantly. 15-minute ride. We didn't know how to get to the gate we needed, but all of the security was very helpful in looking up our section and seat numbers and directing us. The MSU fans were exceedingly nice, joked constantly about how they knew we would blast them and wanted to congratulate us ahead of time. Easy access restrooms and concessions, beer sales until the beginning of the third quarter. Two cans per transaction. Food typical stadium with outrageous prices. (Pretzel was $7)

I was disappointed that our band didn't travel, but the Sparty band played our fight song at the opening ceremonies to acknowledge. 

I know this is everywhere, but the media time outs are beyond tolerable. It took 1 1/2 hours to play a 30-minute half. We ended up leaving 4 minutes into the fourth quarter, which by the time we got back to our truck and got out of the lot(again, very efficient with lots of police and traffic cops), we still didn't arrive home until 1:30 am. The game shouldn't last until 11:00 pm.The rap music played 75% of the time is excruciatingly loud, unnecessary, and is destroying one of college football's most cherished traditions by overriding the band. 

Watching Smith's one-handed catch in person was a highlight. Watching Howard's pass into double coverage was not. Agree that our pass coverage was soft in the first half, with everyone playing way off receivers, to where even I was complaining to others. 

Highly recommend a trip to MSU in the future for games.