But it’s not just in East Lansing; attendance in college football has been down across the nation. Throughout America, fans and students are staying home because there just isn’t that much incentive to go to the stadium anymore.

Did you see Michigan’s student section this year when the Wolverines played Akron? That was so poorly attended, I thought it was a Detroit Pistons game.

Everyone wants to say students are lazy; that students would rather stay home, sleep off their hangover and watch the game on their couch in front of their 60-inch LCD TV.

While that actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all to me, that isn’t the reason why students aren’t coming to games anymore. Students aren’t coming to games anymore because college football is going down the drain.

Teams’ schedules are a joke, especially in the games played outside of the conference. And within the conference, you’d be lucky if half of the contests on the schedule are worth getting excited about.

In the year 2000, Michigan State’s non-conference schedule had three teams: Marshall University, the University of Missouri and Notre Dame. All of those teams were ranked in the top-25 at the time, and all of those games ended up giving fans a pretty entertaining game to watch.

Fast forward a little more than a decade and take a look at MSU’s home football schedule so far this year … it’s terrible. They’ve gone up against Western Michigan (Wastern?), South Florida (who?), Youngstown State (not even in Division I), Indiana (lol!) and Purdue (more like Purdon’t).

After the Michigan game this weekend and the last game of the season against the Minnesota Golden Gophers, which likely will be another snoozer, I count one game out of seven that is definitely worth going to (Michigan). Then, there are the six others that either were, or will be, over by halftime.

With a schedule like that, why should people show up with any consistency? I understand MSU cannot do a thing about the teams they play within the conference, but this is a problem that is only going to get worse when the Big Ten gets even weaker with the impending additions of Maryland and Rutgers.mk

With athletic programs around the country loading up their non-conference schedules with the Youngstown States of the world, universities get the best of both worlds: an easy win that doesn’t hurt the school’s chance of getting to a good bowl at the end of the year and a big fat paycheck from all the clueless fans who paid a small fortune to watch their school stomp on a second-rate opponent for 60 minutes in a matchup that even the other team didn’t expect to win.

But now fans have finally had enough, and I don’t blame them. For the general public, a season ticket package this year at Spartan Stadium was a little more than $300. Sure, it’s about half of that price for students, but it’s still insane to charge so much money and still expect students to show up when nearly every home game becomes a bore when it’s already a four-touchdown game by the third quarter.

Now every game can’t be Michigan-Michigan State. I get that. But when you consistently offer fans only one or two home games to get excited about each season, is it any wonder the games aren’t selling out and student sections are half-full?

I’m aware teams have been scheduling creampuffs on their schedule for as long as football has been played, but it hasn’t always been this bad. And though this is miles away from being Michigan State’s fault, they are part of what seems to be an institution-wide issue.

All fans want to see is real competition. For heaven’s sake, take a page out of Coach Izzo’s book and start the season with some tough teams so you’re actually ready to go at the end of the year.

Or, go ahead and play Youngstown State again. But I won’t be showing up.
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Greg Monahan is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at monaha32@msu.edu_.