This year, Michigan State fans were treated to a Cotton Bowl victory in football and a Final Four appearance in basketball and last year, a Rose Bowl and three weeks at No.1 on ESPN’s 2014 NCAA Men’s Basketball Rankings.
The Spartans’ success has created a buzzing culture in the city of East Lansing. A wallethub.com ranking of “2015’s Best & Worst Cities for Football Fans” analyzed East Lansing as having the fourth “most friendly and engaged college football fans” and the No.1 college football city in the nation. Columbus, Ohio, home of the reigning college football national champion, Ohio State University, was ranked 15th, despite a first-place finish in the “best performing college football teams” category.
The ranking shows that winning is not everything. So, it could be said that East Lansing’s sports-buzz has created its success —though not likely. Nonetheless, the rankings provide evidence that the fans’ impact is real — a reality that athletic director, Mark Hollis, knows all too well.
Hollis is primed to be inducted into the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators Hall of Fame and has been a leading innovator of college sports.
In November of 2011, Hollis helped orchestrate the Carrier Classic between MSU and the University of North Carolina. The classic was the first college basketball game to be played on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Fan engagement, though affected by a multitude of factors, arguably increased after the nationwide attention, as the Spartans’ overall home attendance increased by 17 percent from the previous season, according to msuspartans.com.
Hollis, however, is not the only Spartan to garner fans. Mark Dantonio and Tom Izzo, the Spartans’ football and basketball coaches, started building the university’s attractive brand during their first year together in 2007.
According to statistics by msuspartans.com, the university has won 78 percent of its football and basketball games since 2007. In every year under Dantonio, besides his first in 2007, Spartan Stadium has held more than 500,000 home fans per season. And, under Izzo from 2008 to present, the Breslin Center has held more than 200,000 home fans per season.
In 2015, the Spartans’ football program will kick off the season ranked 16th in the country by the ESPN Football Power Index, while the basketball program welcomes two ESPN Top 100 commits in 6-foot-9 forward Deyonta Davis and 6-foot-4 guard Matt McQuaid.
Football season tickets will go on sale June 15, 2015, at the Spartan Athletics’ official website, and basketball season tickets will be available on a date yet to be released.
