Thousands of fans swarmed Cedar Village moments after the big win.
"There was a lot of riot police and police on horses in the area, and everything seemed fine," said MSU student Jake Hare. "It was mostly just people standing around and then it started escalating."
13 fires were set around the city, and eight people, including six students, were arrested.
"We acted pretty quickly, took the worst offenders that we could out of the crowd, took them to jail, arrested some other people in the area," said East Lansing Police Lt. Scott Wriggelsworth. "That pretty much made the crowd dissipate fairly quickly."
It's a problem the city and university says it has put a lot of resources into preventing.
"The whole Spartan nation does not want this to happen," said Dennis Martell. "What we want is everyone to view us nationally as a very respectable and responsible place both to win and to celebrate."
While many students say they know when to leave, "Me and my friends, we left shortly after people started blowing off fireworks," said Hare.
"I knew it was pretty rough place to be around for cop action," said MSU student Thomas Glazier. "I wasn't gonna make that decision to be there."
Some still choose to participate in the activities.
"There's a national issue around celebrating sports victories or defeats where people go out and sometimes engage in over-exuberant celebrations and sometimes gets into destructive behavior," said East Lansing City Manager George Lahanas.
Behavior the university says it has and will take action against.
"There are consequences for any types of behavior that are destructive or start fires or destroy property," said Martell.
As they continue reminding students to stay responsible.
Police have already started making plans for the big game on New Year's Eve.
