Michigan State is headed into one of the toughest early tests on its schedule Saturday night, and the setting only raises the stakes: the Spartans travel to No. 3 Notre Dame for the first “Battle for the Megaphone” since 2017.
MSU enters at 2-0 after taking care of business against Toledo and Eastern Michigan, but this is a major jump in competition. The Irish are also 2-0, and the matchup brings back a rivalry that has spent long stretches on ice.
If you’re looking to follow along, Noah Eagle will handle play-by-play on TV with Todd Blackledge as the analyst and Kathryn Tappen on the sidelines. On the radio side, the Spartans’ flagship network includes Lansing’s WMMQ (94.9 FM)/WJIM (1240 AM), Detroit’s WJR (760 AM), and Grand Rapids’ WBFX (101.3 FM), with other Michigan stations listed elsewhere.
SiriusXM listeners can find the game on channels 178 or 232, or on the SiriusXM App at channel 956. The radio crew features George Blaha on play-by-play, Jehuu Caulcrick as analyst, Tre Mosley on the sideline, and Dalton Shetler hosting.
This meeting also comes with some real historical weight. The gap between games has now reached nine years, the longest the rivalry has gone without being played in decades.
Michigan State and Notre Dame did not meet from 1922 to 1947, played every year from 1959 to 1994, then paused again for two seasons before resuming from 1997 to 2013. After the 2016 and 2017 home-and-home, the series has again gone dormant, with Notre Dame scheduled to visit East Lansing in 2027 before another stretch without a game appears likely.
Notre Dame holds the edge in the all-time series, 47-29-1, not counting two vacated Irish wins from 2012 and 2013. The Irish won the most recent matchup in 2017 in East Lansing, 38-10, while Michigan State’s last victory in the series came the year before in South Bend, 36-28. Overall, the Spartans are 14-29 all-time at Notre Dame.
Saturday also marks the highest-ranked Notre Dame team Michigan State has faced since the Irish were No. 1 in 1990. MSU was ranked No. 24 in that game and lost at home, 20-19.
If the Spartans are going to pull off the upset, they’ll have to break through some ugly streaks. Michigan State has dropped 11 straight against AP Top 25 teams overall, 12 straight against AP Top 5 teams, and 12 straight while unranked against AP Top 5 teams.
That said, Notre Dame has shown a crack in the armor early in the Marcus Freeman era. The Irish were upset at home by Marshall in 2022 while ranked No. 8, then fell to Northern Illinois in 2024 while ranked No. 5.
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No. 1 Michigan State Let This Rivalry Match Slip Away
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The bigger concern for Michigan State was how quickly the game got away from it once the momentum shifted. Michigan found a way to break through and then kept the Spartans on their heels the rest of the way, handing Michigan State its first loss of the season and underscoring how thin the margin can be in a rivalry game, even for a top-ranked team. [Read more 🡒]