Schedule News: MSU-Penn State Moves to Ford Field on Black Friday

Per MSU Football, the regular season finale against Penn State is moving to Detroit for this season.

This year’s battle for the greatest trophy in all of sports will take place a day earlier than initially scheduled, indoors at Ford Field. It’ll be a 7:30 kickoff, airing on NBC as part of the new Big Ten media rights deal that takes effect this year.

Most details are TBD at this point, as this news throws a lot of different curveballs at a lot of different parties - how will tickets be allocated, when does this year’s senior class get celebrated, what happens to next year’s game set to be played in Happy Valley, and how do the MHSAA high school championships traditionally held at Ford Field contort themselves around the all-consuming money monster that is college athletics in 2023.

As someone who attended the last game in this series played in the state, I’m not heartbroken about the idea of playing indoors on Thanksgiving weekend. Beyond that, my emotions are pretty mixed. The magic of a college campus on gameday is worth a little frostbite once in a while.