[1] On September 24, 2005, during Michigan week, a couple of Penn State students brazenly defaced the newly installed bronze Sparty statue.

[6] The statue was splattered with blue paint and the base tagged with the letters PSU.

The perpetrators were able to evade capture despite the incident occurring in the middle of the day, during the traditional period of time when the statue is guarded by MSU student employees and Spartan Marching Band members, in what is called Sparty Watch.

In 2014, when Maryland and Rutgers joined the Big Ten, the conference was realigned into two geographically based divisions, East and West.

Fellow Big Ten members Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio State, Purdue and Wisconsin are also land-grant schools.