If you find piles of elephant mess around Jenison Field House, don't be alarmed and certainly don't step in it. It's there because Barnum & Bailey is in town, working with the MSU Athletics Department to make Spartans sports a three-ring circus.

While most MSU fans were watching a rolled up Big Ten championship banner tease Breslin Center on Tuesday night, it was announced that MSU is in talks with the Air Force Academy and Navy to play a basketball game aboard the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. To be sure, it's been decided that playing a basketball game on a large boat is good for the image of MSU athletics.

Has Ron Mason changed his name to Giggles? Does the entire athletics department now pile into a comically small car to travel to away games? Who would be genuinely excited to watch, or play, a basketball game on the tarmac of an aircraft carrier?

Apparently, for a Spartans fan to enjoy the game now, one must be part of a record-setting crowd or spectate in a stadium or arena generally not used for the event in question. In 2001, the Cold War showed MSU and Michigan fans that hockey actually could be played outdoors in a football stadium. It was fun, despite the 2-2 final score. At the time, it set a record for hockey attendance, pitted rivals against each other and made for an excited, raucous atmosphere.

Then, last December, hockey in a football stadium apparently became small potatoes, and the Powers That Be sold out Ford Field so MSU could lose home-court advantage in a game against Kentucky. It was named The BasketBowl. Another record was set, this time for basketball attendance, and the Spartans lost. To anyone who went, the best way to describe the experience was "sorta neat."

Did anyone really enjoy The BasketBowl? Was there a strong pro-BasketBowl contingency present that was overlooked? Most fans seemed to gripe about bad seats and expensive parking. Same can go for playing Oklahoma at the Palace of Auburn Hills.

And this can't be an attempt to follow suit. No other athletics program across the country is creating such lavish attempts at publicity. The whole trend is a blatant opportunity for the athletics department to rack up a profit. Over-the-top theatrics mingling with sports is cheap, frivolous and makes the university look bad.

The Cold War was a rivalry game knowingly put in an atmosphere that would amplify its magnitude. The BasketBowl was an unmitigated failure at the same thing. To finalize plans for basketball at sea would be incredibly sensational, utterly unnecessary and laughably ostentatious.

The athletics department says it's planning this to show its support for the U.S. Armed Services. That already happens before every game when the national anthem is sung. Officials feel that, as "leaders in collegiate athletics," it's MSU's responsibility to show the nation how over-the-top college sports can be.

Well, Giggles, Bozo, Binky and Krusty, MSU isn't a "leader" of collegiate athletics. Pretentious and show boat attempts at overexposing athletics is a certifiably classless way to keep the Spartans from ever leading the pack.