East Lansing police arrested 23 people Saturday night and also had three times more assault calls than each of this year's previous two football Saturdays.
On the same day, MSU police arrested 131 people — a 54 percent increase compared to the number of arrests on the 2004 Notre Dame game day.
MSU spokesman Terry Denbow and Lee June, vice president of student affairs and services, declined to comment about the arrest statistics from Saturday.
June, who was part of the discussions that led to tailgating rule changes in 2004, declined to comment Tuesday.
"I prefer to yield my comments to Fred Poston, since he's been the one looking at numbers," June said.
Poston, MSU's vice president for finance and operations, said Sunday he would review MSU police reports Monday and provide comment, but he did not return calls Tuesday.
Denbow declined to comment on the arrest statistics because he said MSU officials are still analyzing the figures.
"The numbers might not seem extremely truthful when looking at them the first time," Denbow said. "We feel we owe an obligation to the university to make sure all the facts and numbers are correct, and that is the reason for the in-depth analysis."
East Lansing police Public Information Officer Capt. Kim Johnson said the number of arrests and offenses are consistent with other home football game weekends.
"The rain and the MSU loss helped keep things cool," Johnson said. "Our Welcome Weeks are busier than (Saturday)."
MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said she didn't consider the 54 percent increase in arrests to be alarming.
"In terms of the weather being nice, initially, and because there was the third-(largest) crowd in the history of MSU (in Spartan Stadium) that contributed to the number of arrests," she said. "Notre Dame is such a big game, and certainly it would draw a big crowd — it was highly promoted so we got a great crowd."
More than 80,000 fans attended Saturday's game, compared to about 75,000 in both 2002 and 2004. There were 85 arrests made when MSU played Notre Dame two years ago.
Twelve assault calls to East Lansing police were made Saturday, which is triple the number on each football Saturday this season.
Johnson also attributed the rise in assaults to the high volume of people participating in the game-day festivities and said he was unsure if the rivalry between the schools was a factor in the increase.
The number of noise complaints in East Lansing on Saturday was the lowest since fall semester began, and Johnson said the rain probably drew more people inside with the windows and doors shut.
Staff writer Justin Kroll contributed to this report.
