These two schools have a historic rivalry that has had 118 meetings dating back to 1898, with plenty of shared hatred between the two schools.
The history of the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry, and what would eventually be known as “The Battle for Paul Bunyan,” goes back into the end of the nineteenth century, in the year 1898. Back to a time where the University was not known as Michigan State, but instead Michigan Agricultural College. How a 118-year-long heated rivalry was spanned from a 39-0 drubbing by the University of Michigan over the Michigan Agricultural College will forever be remembered, as it has become one of the best intrastate rivalries in all of college athletics.
At the time the first game was played, Michigan Agricultural College was still trying to get its foot in the door of the college football world. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan had been playing football since unofficially at least 1870. The gap in talent and experience between the two schools was evident in a majority of the early matchups. The largest margin of defeat came in 1902, when Michigan beat Michigan State 119-0.
In fact, in the first 28 matchups between the programs, Michigan State only won two matchups, in 1913 and 1915, with three ties in between there, in 1908, 1930, and 1931. All of the ties were final scores of 0-0. Michigan State earned their first win over Michigan on October 18, 1913, by a score of 12-7. John Macklin was the head coach of the first Spartans team to beat Michigan.
Early on in this series is where Michigan built up the longest winning streak of either team, by winning 14 straight games from 1916-1929 and going unbeaten until 1934.
Michigan State started to string together a couple of wins in 1934, when they won four straight from 1934-1937. They then won another four straight from 1950-1953, and they were ranked in the Top-25 when they won all of those matchups.
In 1953 is when Michigan State joined the Big Ten Conference, and that was when the rivalry game got the trophy that they would play for today. The year they joined the conference was when both schools decided to introduce a physical trophy that would be awarded to the winning school. They announced the trophy as the Paul Bunyan Governor of Michigan Trophy, which was four-feet tall, and it was a wooden statue of a lumberjack holding an axe.
The award goes back-and-forth between the winning schools every season since then. Paul Bunyan was a folklore hero in the Midwest, and to put that at stake in a rivalry between two in-state schools was a genius move for Michigan and Michigan State. MSU beat Michigan in the inaugural Paul Bunyan Trophy game in 1953 and also won the Big Ten Conference in their first season.
Michigan State won 10 of the next 14 matchups once the Paul Bunyan trophy was inaugurated in 1953. Michigan took back control of the series from 1968 onwards until 2008.
Once Mark Dantonio stepped into the building at MSU in 2006, Michigan State went 8-5, and Dantonio dominated the early-to-mid 2010s of this rivalry. Including one of, if not the best, games in the series in 2015, when Michigan fans hit the surrender cobra after they had trouble with the snap.
When Dantonio stepped down, Mel Tucker took over and won the next two games, including a five-touchdown performance from Kenneth Walker III. After the Walker game in 2021, Michigan has won the last four matchups, looking for a fifth straight win in this series on Saturday. Michigan holds a 75-38-5 series lead.
This rivalry is filled with insane history, plenty of top-tier games, and lots of heated moments between the two schools. This is a rivalry rooted in hatred and a deep history of games. From the “little brother” name-calling to the brawl in the tunnel or even Clockgate, there is so much history to admire from this rivalry.
It may seem lopsided on paper, but from 1968 onward, Michigan State has had a spike in wins, pulling the gap closer. One of the greatest rivalries will continue on and on.