Your Spartan football championship viewing headquarters: The Peanut Barrel

That’s right Spartan fans. Your Michigan State football team is on a bus to Happy Valley, Pennsylvania, to fight the Penn State Nittany Lions for the 2008 Big Ten Football Championship. Kickoff is 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. It will be televised nationally on ABC.

Don’t want to make the 10-hour trek into the middle of nowhere to spend four hours freezing your tail off? Wanna watch it with the Spartan faithful in East Lansing? Where shall I go? Whatever shall I do?

Your Big Ten Championship East Lansing Viewers Guide:

Peanut Barrel - 
The best damn sports bar in East Lansing. Sure, it doubles as a neighborhood pub. If you need to light up, this is also the place to goIt is packed for game days, the food is fantastic – my favorite is a Border Burger with Swiss on Rye – and the atmosphere is hard to beat. Loud and tv screens everywhere. Their Long Island iced-teas (maximum 2 per customer) and Bloody Mary’s are legendary. If you hate smoke (I do) and are unwilling to brave second-hand carcinogens (I am willing to absorb the smoke of others), maybe go elsewhere. Food review

Bw-3 - 
Now, you want to see some of the pretty college coeds while you watch the Big Ten Championship? Then, head a few blocks down and over the Buffalo Wild Wings/bw-3. It’s a big, big place. Their 22-oz beer glasses make for perfect viewing pleasure. The service is pretty good, as are the hot wings. TV screens everywhere, this is the bar of choice for the college kids of drinking age.

Spartan Sports Hall of Fame Cafe -
Decked out in green and white, Spartan championship banners and memorabilia freaking everywhere, the Spartan Sports Cafe is a great place to watch any game. The five large HD tv’s behind the huge bar make for a sports lovers’ dream. You need to head downtown and up by my house on the north end of East Lansing, just off 127 on Lake Lansing Road. The food is pretty damn good, and the environment for Spartan games is electric. Food review 1 & review 2

The Riv –

This is another old standby, a la the Peanut Barrel. Plenty of tvs, several pool tables to take your mind off the game incase MSU is getting its butt kicked. Just a great mix of the older college crowd and people who really, really need to drink cheap. Food is OK, but the environment is damn good. I saw Appalachian State beat Michigan here, and the place erupted, it was electric. That had me sold.

Other Honorable mentions:

Dagwood’s –
Blue collar, cheap beer, great great food... been serving Spartan customers for over 50 years. On Kalamazoo St, just the other side of 127. Big-time thumbs up. Food review.

Harper’s Brewpub –
Huge tv screens and a very very large bar places the old Dooley’s on this list. The homebrewed beer actually is fairly decent. Problem is the service sucks (worst in mid Michigan) and the food is just as bad – and usually cold. Eat before you go, and you’ll be fine. Food review.

Crunchy’s –

This place is good, but nowhere near the place it was when I was in school. It has certainly dropped a few notches, and I don’t think they have replaced the big projection tv since I was in college 20 years ago – picture quality is for shit. Great food, though. Food review.

Dublin Irish Square –

Proximity to downtown is great, food is exceptional. Seems a bit too clean though; it needs a few years to be broken in. I haven’t been there for a game yet, but I would anticipate it to be fairly rocky. Food review.