Oregon football history: Ducks to meet up with Michigan State Spartans again
By Ethan Lee
As the Oregon football program makes the move into the Big Ten, there are a number of new teams they’ll face on a regular basis. For the most part, most of the Oregon Ducks’ old Pac-12 regional foes aren’t going to be meeting up with the Oregon football team moving forward. Instead, as a new member of the Big Ten, the Ducks will get to take on Midwest teams like the Michigan State Spartans.
The Oregon Ducks and the Michigan State Spartans haven’t really faced each other all that often, but their relatively brief history is pretty intriguing, to be completely honest. Despite being separated by many, many miles, the two teams have met before (and will be meeting sooner rather than later).
Oregon Ducks football vs. Michigan State Spartans series overview
In total, the Ducks and Spartans have met up on seven different occasions with their gridiron encounters spanning over four different decades. The series began back in 1979 when the Oregon Ducks took the trip to East Lansing, Michigan. Unfortunately for the Ducks, the Oregon football team didn’t have much fun during that trip east.
Oregon ended up losing its first meeting with Michigan State by a score of 41-17. A year later though, in Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, the Ducks got a bit of revenge and beat Michigan State 35-7 to even the series up.
The Ducks and Spartans didn’t meet up again until the 1998 and 1999 Oregon football seasons, during which they split the home-and-home meetings.
The next batch of home-and-home games came in 2014 and 2015, with the home teams winning both contests (Oregon in 2014 and Michigan State in 2015). In total, the road team has never won in this series. During the only neutral site matchup, Oregon won a sluggish 7-6 bowl game in Santa Clara.
Oregon football vs. Michigan State series summary
- First meeting: September 15, 1979 (Michigan State 41, Oregon 17)
- Last meeting: December 31, 2018 (Oregon 7, Michigan State 6)
- Oregon's record: 4-3
- Total games: 7
- Largest margin of victory: Oregon 48, Michigan State 14 (September 8, 1998)
As the Oregon Ducks make the move to the Big Ten, this series is almost certainly likely to be played more regularly. And who knows, maybe one of these days a road team might win a game?