After another bye week last week, the Michigan State Spartans return to the field this Saturday, in a road game against Illinois.
After nine games of the Spartans wearing their “normal” uniform combos with few changes, things will change up quite a bit this weekend.
MSU revealed this week’s uniform in the usual Wednesday evening social media post, announcing they will be wearing a white helmet, white jersey and white pants this week. The white helmet contains the green greek key stripe, a white facemask, and a Gruff Sparty logo.
This uniform combo marks the sixth unique combo for MSU this season. In previous road matchups, the Spartans have also gone white/white/white, and green/white/white, both with Spartan logos on the helmets. This also marks the first time a logo other than the traditional Spartan logo has appeared on a helmet both this season, and in the Jonathan Smith era.
The Spartan fanbase will be pleased to see the Gruff Sparty logo back, a fan favorite that has seen a renaissance of use in official MSU uniforms the last few years. Football has used the logo on alternate helmets, men’s basketball on alternate shorts worn with the white home uniform, and men’s hockey debuted a Gruff Sparty logo on a white sweater last season. The origin of the logo is somewhat unknown, but the school started using Sparty as a mascot in 1955.
This is the third time Gruff Sparty has appeared on a MSU helmet. He was worn on a green shell with a thin white stripe in a game at Penn State in 2021, and was last worn on a blank white shell against Western Kentucky in 2021. This is the first time the greek key stripe has appeared with an alternate logo of any kind.
I am fired up to see MSU once again wear Gruff Sparty this weekend, and frankly, for an alternate logo of any kind. After getting used to ever-changing helmets the last few seasons, things had been a bit boring this season on that front. Between the Shadows uniforms and Gruff Sparty this week, things have been exciting for uniform fanatics like myself.
Illinois has yet to formally announce their uniform for this week’s game, which is also Senior Day for the Illini. They have been practicing this week in an orange helmet with their Block I logo.
Michigan State has their third Friday night game of the season next week, as they return home to take on Purdue. Will Coach Smith keep branching out uniform-wise and introduce yet another new combo next week?
