“If we weren’t going to a bowl we probably would have sucked it up and not hired anybody,” SBS assistant manager Mike Wylie said.

Other stores haven’t enjoyed the same sales spike. Campus Street Sportswear manager Tom Tatum said people seem to be waiting to see if the team makes it to a national championship.

To many retailers not seeing a substantial playoff merchandise sales spike, the consumers’ decision seems logical. 

“If you had a choice would you want a Cotton Bowl T-shirt or a championship T-shirt?” Campus Corner manager Chad Freehauf said.

The playoff is new territory for both MSU’s football team and local retailers. 

“It’s unusual, I think it’s partly because the playoff is new and State has never been in it before,” Tatum said.

Many retailers have shifted to more nationally established brands such as Nike. 

“Nike is recent in regards to MSU merchandise, relatively speaking since they go back around a decade,” Wylie said.

MSU has gone from competing in the likes of the Poland Wheat Eater Bowl to being on the cusp of winning a national championship.

This has coincided with an improvement in the bowl merchandise stocked by retailers. Merchandise for MSU’s 1993 Liberty Bowl appearance “looked like it was done by someone in their house with a tie dye single ink printing machine,” Wylie said. “Now you go to national companies.”

Often times sales numbers are impacted by how prestigious the bowl game MSU competes in is. 

“A smaller bowl might have merchandise produced by a good company but there just wasn’t as much interest in that bowl,” Wylie said.