Of all the male sports at MSU, football, basketball and hockey soak up most of the attention. But seriously, what makes those three sports any more important and entertaining than the other male sports?
The answer: nothing.
Despite the pre-season powerhouse football team plummeting into the nation's biggest laughingstock, a fall that included two embarrassing losses by a combined score of 110-10, football is football.
Basketball will be one of the nation's top programs as long as Tom Izzo is at the helm and hockey, though it faded a bit in 2003, will get back on the map.
But in MSU's smaller sports there is just as much of a winning tradition, if not more of one.
The MSU baseball team entered the 2003 season after setting numerous Spartan records in 2002 en route to a superb 38-19 finish. And though the Spartans were 11-24 through April 21, baseball still has an advantage over the high-revenue sports, MSU manager Ted Mahan said.
"It's still America's game," he said. "What's unique is most everyone played baseball when they were young. Not everyone played football or basketball.
"It's still the great American pastime."
Other sports may not be named "America's pastime" but the love for the game still burns.
Take soccer for example. The Spartans, who finished 12-7 overall and in a five-way tie for second in the conference, still locked horns with Michigan in another sport's version of the U-M-MSU rivalry (a 2-1 MSU victory in Ann Arbor).
The soccer team was left on the doorstep for the NCAA Tournament in 2002, but the expectations and excitement for the 2003 season are extremely bright.
Another team that had an incredibly exciting year was the wrestling squad. Tom Minkel's grapplers caught fire during the middle of the year, winning seven straight matches, five of which came against ranked teams.
The grapplers finished the season 10-7 and placed 18th out of 70-plus teams at the NCAA Championships. The 18th-place finish was the eighth time in the last nine years the team has placed in the top 25 at the NCAAs.
The NCAA Championships' final standings featured six Big Ten teams in the top 10. During the regular season, the Spartans knocked off five of those teams.
Two wrestlers, Gray Maynard and Nick Simmons, also claimed All-American honors.
Senior Gray Maynard represented the wrestling team well, claiming an All-American honor for the third consecutive year.
Jim Stintzi's cross country squad didn't have a bad year either, finishing 30th at the NCAA Championships. It was the second straight year the cross country squad went to the NCAA Championships.
The men's golf team was still finishing up their season at the time of press, but through April, MSU was raising many eyebrows for its performances. In the Inverness Intercollegiate Tournament, the Spartans' first competition of the year, the Spartans placed third out of 15 teams, and the team never stopped rolling, once again proving smaller sports are just as entertaining as the big money makers.
The men's tennis team had one of their best seasons ever, finishing fifth in the Big Ten. It was the highest finish for the Spartan tennis team since 1996.
All in all, the smaller sports might not have the luxury seating, the fancy arena, the popularity or the hype, but taking in a game will feel all the same.
