Michigan State Football: Updated game-by-game predictions for 2020

With the conference-only schedule being officially released on Wednesday, it’s time to look at how Michigan State football may fare in 2020.

It’s official, the 2020 season schedule is here and Michigan State now knows who it has to prepare for as the opener approaches.

Like Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said on Wednesday afternoon, however, there’s no guarantee that a season will even happen despite the official schedule being released. We all knew that was the case, but it feels as if everyone is preparing for the scenario in which the season is either cancelled or postponed.

Mel Tucker enters his first year as the Spartans’ head coach and he hasn’t had the easiest of roads since getting to East Lansing.

For starters, he was hired in mid-February after National Signing Day which no coach in the country, outside of Karl Dorrell, can say. Second, he was given less than a month to recruit face-to-face and that hasn’t been enough to develop relationships with in-state kids who wanted to get to know the new staff. Then he missed out on spring ball with COVID-19 and recruiting spiked in April and May before dying down in the summer months.

Now in August, his team was forced to quarantine for two weeks after a handful of players and staff members tested positive for the virus.

Overall, it’s been a whirlwind of a start to the Tucker era.

Tucker’s tenure officially starts on Sept. 5 — pending a potential season cancellation — when Minnesota comes to town. How will the Spartans fare in the new conference-only schedule?