EAST LANSING – In the third quarter of Saturday's punishing loss to Penn State, in the slish and slosh of rain, Michigan State decided to try to do something for a fan that it couldn't on the field. It wanted to bring some joy.

A middle-aged man stepped onto the Spartan Stadium grass to attempt a 30-yard field goal. Make it and he’d join the Spartans to wherever they go to play a bowl game this year.

But like so much else on the day of a 28-7 loss, the ball fluttered like a drowned duck and came nowhere near the target.

The crowd didn’t cheer, but nor did it sigh. It didn’t seem all too sure how to react. Sometimes a day can feel like a year, and they were all left wondering whether they just wanted it to end.

At each stoppage from then on out, a new pack of poncho'd fans headed for the exit. That’s what a three-score deficit in the pouring rain and nip of the October air will do to a fan base that doesn’t find it shocking anymore. This has been life for the past month, where top-10 opponents Ohio State, Wisconsin and Penn State have rolled to a combined score of 100-17 over Michigan State.

In some ways, it’s been life for a couple years at Michigan State. But it isn’t all they know. And that's why many can't leave.

Jason Thompson was a student in these stands just two years ago, when Michigan State went 10-3. His freshman year, the Spartans won the Rose Bowl. As a junior, he watched them play in a monsoon at Ohio State and take down arguably the most talented team Urban Meyer ever had.

But on Saturday, in another monsoon against another top-10 team, he stood under the concrete deck in the corner opposite an empty student section and watched as his team got manhandled in every phase. The type of game it used to win, on special teams and in the trenches and by limiting big plays, is the kind it now consistently loses. That leaves fans of all ages to ponder whether a program that is 15-17 in Big Ten games the past four years has only stalled or whether it has actually gone in reverse.

“We’re not ever going to be Ohio State. Let’s be real,” said Mike Thompson, class of 1988. “I would love to be what Wisconsin has, but I’m not sure we’re even going to get to that level. ..."

“If you’re competitive, you’re fun to watch. This isn’t fun.”

That was the consistent message that came Saturday from the fans who stayed through the rain and cold: It isn’t the end of the world to be 7-5 again, but that doesn’t make it enjoyable. These people weren't from the Twitter crowd, which tries to fire a coach and burn down a program with words that don’t cost anything. These are the paying customers, with years of loyalty built up at a school and a stadium. They’re the diehards who stick it out through the rain.

That is, until they don’t. Dave and Julie Boze, of the class of 1976, ascended the concrete steps to the exit before Dave let an usher know this was only the fourth game since 1969 that he'd left early.

“It’s not about the kids. It’s always about the leadership,” said Dave Boze, who also said he'd be back next week. “The leadership is just down. And I hate saying that because Mark (Dantonio) is a great guy.”

That's the quandary hanging over loyalists like a dark cloud in the sky: Should they call out the coach with the school-record 111 wins, who has captured three Big Ten titles and made them question whether Michigan State was a basketball school after all?

Then again, many of them were in the Breslin Center the night before for the basketball team's "Midnight Madness" and know how different that felt. Tom Izzo told them to wave their cell phones in the dark and they did, and when the players raised a banner for a Final Four appearance, the date written across it of 2019 showed them success doesn't have to be a memory.

But football is a sport of endurance, and they were in a different world sitting on cold bleachers in the rain as they squinted to try to see what used to be. Perhaps if they could spot an identity on this 4-4 football team, like a budding strength or a rising young star, they could shrug this off as just one cold and dreary day.

“The team is just nothing,” Boze said.

And that nothingness, engulfed in wind and rain, has a way of making the body feel numb.

Only when the clock dipped under a minute remaining did the two men sitting on the highest bleacher seat finally get up to leave. The two twenty-somethings inched across the bleacher to the exit row before they stopped to watch the final seconds tick away.

“I can’t believe we stayed that long,” one said to the other. “That is unbelievable.”

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Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.