Michigan-Michigan State has LOGO STOMPS, WEATHER DELAYS, and all

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This game (happening on FOX) had all sorts of commotion before it was even nine minutes old. Follow along here.

No. 6 Michigan is visiting No. 24 Michigan State on Saturday, trying to get out from under years of ownership by Mark Dantonio and stay in the College Football Playoff race.

You can watch the game on FOX, and this post will be lightly updated throughout the game with score updates and notes about whatever general weirdness happens.

If the programs’ history is an indicator, there’ll be plenty more weirdness.

The score was 7-0, Michigan, at halftime. The Wolverines had a 170-49 yardage edge, including a 4.6-1.9 edge in averagegain. But despite an average starting field position of their own 39, compared to MSU’s start at its own 16, UM only led by a touchdown. A 36-yard Quinn Nordin field goal that would’ve expanded the lead missed badly in the second quarter.

Here are score updates, as they happen.

Most recent up top:

• 7-7, after Michigan State converts a fumble deep inside Michigan territory into a Brian Lewerke touchdown catch, on basically that Eagles Super Bowl play.
• 7-0 Michigan on a 6-yard Shea Patterson touchdown pass to Nico Collins, capping a 14-play, 84-yard drive that an hour-plus weather delay interrupted. It was Michigan’s first touchdown pass against Michigan State since 2011. That QB was Denard Robinson.

The game was delayed due to lightning for about 80 minutes, with neither team yet to score in the first quarter.

At about 12:30 p.m. ET, with 6:11 left in the first, the game went on delay. The Spartans told fans to leave the stadium, and the game resumed just before 1:50 p.m. ET.

In 2017, weather was a factor in MSU’s win in Ann Arbor. Dantonio’s Spartans’ wins have tended to take on an ugly appearance. It’s extremely fitting — and for UM fans, probably scary — that this weather has visited East Lansing on this of all Saturdays. Given Michigan’s dangerous passing offense, bad weather seems like it should favor the Spartans as it so often has before.

Of course there was snow in East Lansing:

Before that, there was a bunch of anger and chippiness during warmups.

One thing: Michigan linebacker Devin Bush relentlessly kicking the Spartan logo at midfield, dragging his spikes across it to rip out grass:

(Bush still needed to play a game on that field, and maybe it’s not the safest thing to create divots in the grass within two hours of kickoff, but that’s just my opinion.)

The Wolverines have longstanding issues with the field at this stadium. Four years ago, they jammed a spike into the ground there before the game.

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Mark Dantonio, who owns Michigan, later had his players run up the score in MSU’s 35-11 win. Then he criticized Brady Hoke’s program after the game.

Another thing Saturday: Michigan State was taking its customary pregame walk across its home field, with pretty much the entire team linking arms. Some Michigan players were on the field warming up at this point, and a few of them just opted to not move:

The Spartans’ walk continued mostly unabated, but not without drama:

So, the Wolverines don’t sound happy about that.

Once the game started, it started hot:

All of this exists within a history of beefing between the two programs, and recently between their two head coaches.

Harbaugh and Dantonio had this exchange in 2017:

Michigan got a better bowl placement, which was questionable, given that the Spartans had a better record and also won head-to-head. So, Dantonio said:

To which Harbaugh said:

To which Dantonio said this ...

... which was a reference to this comment from his first year in East Lansing, before he commenced a decade of regularly beating Michigan:

Stay tuned.