The Oregon Ducks fully embarked into their new conference last week, playing their first Big Ten conference game against UCLA. But this week, they’ll cement their shift by playing their first conference game against a legacy Big Ten team: the Michigan State Spartans.
The Ducks Friday night matchup with the Spartans won’t be the first in the history of the two schools, but this matchup is far from being a storied rivalry. This will be the eighth meeting between Oregon and Michigan State and the first since 2018.
The first of the previous seven matchups in this series came in 1979 as the first leg of a home-and-home series (a two-year series featuring a home game for each team). The Ducks and the Spartans then played two more home-and-homes, first in 1998-99 and then in 2014-15. The seventh game between these two programs was a matchup in the 2018 Redbox Bowl.
An interesting anecdote about this series is that the Ducks are undefeated in Autzen Stadium against the Spartans, and Michigan State is undefeated in Spartan Stadium against Oregon. In the Redbox Bowl, the series’ only game played at a neutral site, the Ducks were victorious 7-6.
Some fantastic and classic coaches have taken part in this series, including Rich Brooks, Mike Belloti, Nick Saban, and Mark Dantonio. This week, Dan Lanning and Jonathan Smith — two great coaches who have gone toe-to-toe before — will add their names to that list, as Lanning will try to extend Oregon’s home win streak against the Spartans.