Oct 30, 2021; East Lansing, MI, USA; Michigan State players celebrate the 37-33 win over Michigan with the Paul Bunyan trophy at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing on Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. Mandatory Credit: Junfu Han-Imagn Images Detroit Free Press-Imagn Images

MSU Football Gets 3 Games on Big Ten's New 'Rivalry Series'

Originally posted on Michigan State Spartans on SI
By Jacob Cotsonika | Last updated Sep 26, 2025 2:42 PM ET

The Big Ten Conference announced another new venture on Friday, netting Venmo as a sponsor and creating the conference's first-ever "Big Ten Rivalry Series," which will feature football, men's basketball, and women's basketball games during the 2025-26 season.

Ironically enough, the Rivalry Series will start with a non-rivalry game on Saturday for the Oregon-Penn State football game. There are a few other head-scratchers on (or not on) the list of 17 football games that the conference chose. For example, Michigan-Maryland is included while UM-Ohio State and Minnesota-Wisconsin are omitted.

Michigan State has three of its games on there, and they all make sense.

Oct. 18 - Michigan State at Indiana (Old Brass Spittoon)

In what might be Michigan State's toughest game on its 2025 schedule, the Spartans will head to Bloomington to take on Indiana to try to get the Old Brass Spittoon back.

This is the 15th consecutive season that MSU and IU will meet and vie for the trophy against each other. There could be some additional stakes in this one, as these teams are not scheduled to play each other in 2026, so the winner will get to hold onto the Spittoon for two years before the rivalry gets picked up again in 2027.

In the all-time series, Michigan State holds a commanding 50-19-2 overall lead, but the Hoosiers have possession of the trophy at the moment after winning 47-10 in East Lansing last season.

Oct. 25 - Michigan at Michigan State (Paul Bunyan Trophy)

No surprise here. The de facto state championship game between the Spartans and the Michigan Wolverines has become one of the most bitter rivalries in all of college football, especially in the last couple of decades.

Michigan has won the last three matchups and holds possession of the Paul Bunyan Trophy, with the most recent meeting being a 24-17 result in Michigan Stadium. Both MSU's Jonathan Smith and Michigan's Sherrone Moore were in their first year as the head coaches at their respective programs last season, though Moore had a head start on his understanding of the rivalry, given that he's been on UM's staff since 2018.

Nov. 15 - Penn State at Michigan State (Land Grant Trophy)

In the personal opinion of this writer, the Land Grant Trophy is pretty hideous. But hey, a trophy is a trophy, and that trophy pictured above is what Michigan State and Penn State have chosen to play for.

Penn State won the last meeting between these two squads easily, a 42-0 rout of MSU in Ford Field that finished off the Spartans' 2023 season. The Nittany Lions hold a slim, 19-18-1 lead in the all-time series, but hold an 18-10 lead since the trophy was introduced.