MSU and Baylor fans travel to Dallas, Texas, for the Cotton Bowl. On New Year's Eve, fans watched their respective student marching bands face off in the Cotton Bowl's first-ever battle of the bands.
New Year's Day at AT&T Stadium will be reserved for the football players, but New Year's eve saw a different battle take place in North Texas.
For the first time ever, the Baylor and MSU marching bands competed in a battle of the bands at Klyde Warren Park in downtown Dallas.
The event also served as a pep rally a chance for fans to come together and support either the Bears or the Spartans. Spartan Marching Band director John T. Madden said it is a common tradition during bowl games, even if this is the first one at the Cotton Bowl.
"It's common to do a 'battle of the bands'," he said. "There wasn't a rumble, there was no bloodshed, it wasn't that kind of battle."
Hundreds of people — from alumni to students and even young children — from Baylor and MSU gathered on opposite sides to hear the two bands trade songs. Waco, Texas, the home of Baylor, is only about 100 miles away from Dallas, something that MSU fans said has contributed to there being more Bears than Spartans.
"I think there's a lot of Baylor people," MSU alumnus and Lansing resident Molly Cyderman-Weber said. "But Waco is like, what, 100 miles away? It would be kind of sad if they didn't show up."
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