The double-bye returns to college football this season, meaning an additional week off for every team.

Another week of rest baked into the schedule could be a positive, but Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio isn’t looking at it that way. That’s because the Spartans’ two byes come in a three-week period.

“I think that that’s a lot of time off,” Dantonio said this month. “Especially, when in front of that, you play three of the four games away. So, there’s a lot there to look at and say how did that happen but that’s not for me to say, just to bring up, be controversial.”

This is the first season of the double-bye since 2014. The reason is the calendar, as an early Labor Day and late Thanksgiving result in the regular season expanding from 13 to 14 weeks to play 12 games.

After starting the season with three homes games in nonconference play, Michigan State plays three of its first four Big Ten games on the road – at Northwestern, vs. Indiana, at Ohio State and at Wisconsin. That difficult stretch is followed by a bye week, an Oct. 26 home game against Penn State, then another bye before hosting Illinois on Nov. 9.

“Is there another team in America that has a bye, a game and a bye?” Dantonio said. “I don’t think that there is.”

Checking the schedules of all 130 FBS teams might be something Dantonio could ask a staffer to do but Michigan State stands alone in the Big Ten. The Spartans are the only Big Ten team with two byes in three weeks while Ohio State and Nebraska have two byes in four weeks.

Dantonio divides each season into segments for his team and the portion with just one game in three weeks will be its own this year.

“I think it’s a challenge,” Dantonio said. “How do you handle that week? … You’re playing one game in three weeks. So, what’s the level of your conditioning? When you don’t play football, you sort of get out of that. So, how do you practice, how do you recruit, all these different things?

“You have to make those changes, but we’ll embrace those, just like we’ll embrace the away games. There’s not a place that we’ve played that we haven’t won’t in in this conference so we can go play and win in any stadium.”