Harlon Barnett, Michigan State restore full length of popular pre-game 'Spartan Walk'

East Lansing, Mich. – After a one-year hiatus, the traditional “Spartan Walk” will be conducted from its original location, spanning its full-length course, beginning roughly two hours and 15 minutes prior to Saturday’s kickoff of the Michigan State-Washington game.

Michigan State football announced via social media on Wednesday afternoon: “This week, the Spartan Walk route will begin at the Kellogg Hotel starting at 2:50 p.m. on Saturday.”

This week the Spartan Walk route will begin at the Kellogg Hotel starting at 2:50pm on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/GLUqfW7J8n

— Michigan State Football (@MSU_Football) September 13, 2023

Last year, Michigan State’s football operation shortened the distance of the Spartan Walk. Instead of the traditional walk from the Kellogg Center, players were bussed to the Sparty Statue, and they walked to the stadium from that location, a shorter route. It was an alteration that was not popular with some fans.

On Saturday, the Spartan Walk will resume with its full, traditional length with interim head coach Harlon Barnett overseeing its reinstitution.

Michigan State will play host to No. 8-ranked Washington at 5 p.m. in the first game since Mel Tucker was suspended as head coach following the public disclosure of a sexual misconduct complaint against him, and university administrators’ claim that the revelation of new details involving the case led to the decision to suspend him without pay.

Michigan State fans have traditionally stood along the Spartan Walk route and cheered players as they walked to the stadium for home games. Now, fans will be able to support them along the original route.

Otis Wiley, general manager of Playfly Sports Properties, which handles Michigan State’s corporate sponsorships and broadcasting solutions and a former Michigan State football player, broke the news of the reinstitution of the full Spartan Walk on Tuesday night during the This Is Sparta podcast.

“One of the traditions was changed,” he told the podcast audience. “What I need everybody to do is when you get to campus and you’re tailgating and having a great time, laughing it up, getting ready for the game, you’ve got to get to The Walk. It’s going back to walking from Kellogg to the tunnel. 

“So I need everybody to line up like it’s 1998, like it’s back in the 2000s.”

The Spartan Walk has been a tradition at Michigan State for decades. Prior to 2020, Michigan State football players would make the walk, usually in gameday suits, from the Kellogg Hotel, the site of the team’s overnight stay prior to games, over the Red Cedar River, through the tree-lined sidewalks adjacent to Old College Field, through the Sparty Statue area, along Red Cedar Road, and to the Spartan Stadium tunnel entrance to the locker room area.

“Let’s honestly show up in waves and waves of support, along the river, from Kellogg, through Sparty and to the tunnel,” Wiley said. “Get there early, like it’s a parade, set up shop, sit down there and wait. It’s going to be great. I think that’s an element of Coach D (Mark Dantonio), and also Coach B.

“Coach B lived it. He walked the walk. It’s an element of: We have to get back to the basics in getting ready for the game.

“They need to see this. They need to see a wave of support and it needs to be crazy because this is a big game.”

During his first press conference as interim head coach on Tuesday, Barnett said he reinstitution the Dantonio tradition of a post-practice prayer. There have been indications that the Dantonio-era field walk on the grass at Spartan Stadium, after the Spartan Walk and prior to entering the locker room, may also be reinstituted on Saturday.

Dantonio was added to Barnett’s staff on Sunday as assistant head coach by Michigan State athletic director Alan Haller. Barnett coached under Dantonio at Cincinnati at Michigan State for 14 years.