Michigan State football gets kickoff time announced for Illinois matchup

Michigan State will crown its Homecoming weekend with a Big Ten matchup on Oct. 10 against Illinois, and kickoff is now locked in. The Big Ten announced this week that the game at Spartan Stadium will start at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time and air on FS1.

It's the first league game of the season for the Spartans that will have a normal starting window after the conference opener against Nebraska was scheduled for 5 p.m. ET and the game at Wisconsin was slotted for an odd 12:30 pm ET start.

It will mark the Spartans' third afternoon kickoff of the season, joining games against Eastern Michigan (3:30 p.m., BTN) and Nebraska (5 p.m., BTN), sandwiched around a Friday-night opener against Toledo and a prime-time trip to Notre Dame.

MSU enters the next stretch sitting at 2-2 after a 35-7 win over Eastern Michigan and a 30-20 win over Toledo were followed by a 27-10 loss at then-No. 3 ND and a 31-13 defeat to UNL in East Lansing — the Spartans' first back-to-back skid of coach Pat Fitzgerald's tenure. Before hosting the Illini, MSU still has to get through a road trip to Wisconsin on Oct. 3.

Illinois, meanwhile, is also 2-2 (0-1 Big Ten) under sixth-year coach Bret Bielema. The Illini opened with a 42-23 win over UAB, then lost 31-27 to Duke before routing FCS Southern Illinois 48-10. Illinois opened conference play with a 42-19 loss at No. 7 Ohio State on Saturday, a game in which Buckeyes' receiver Jeremiah Smith tied a school record with four touchdown catches. Bielema announced on Sunday following the loss he had fired the team's defensive coordinator, Bobby Hauck. He had been hired on to install a 3-3-5 defensive scheme, a decision Bielema noted over the preseason he installed due to budget constraints in trying to recruit a group of defensive lineman capable of running his preferred four-man front. The now former DC had only just been hired in February having led Montana as its head coach, a program he led as the winningest coach in both school and Big Sky Conference history with a 151-43 record. Illinois hosts Purdue for its own Homecoming on Oct. 3 before heading to East Lansing.

Michigan State leads the all-time series 27-19-2, but Illinois has won the last meeting. The Illini beat the Spartans 38-16 in Champaign on Nov. 16, 2024, the most recent game in the series. MSU's last win over Illinois came in 2022, a 23-15 decision also played in Champaign. Before that, Illinois pulled off the biggest comeback in program history in the 2019 meeting in East Lansing, rallying from a 28-3 deficit to win 37-34 on a Brandon Peters-to-Daniel Barker touchdown with five seconds left.