Ad Disclosure
Kyle Whittingham on the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry: ‘It’s a national game’
Published:
Kyle Whittingham has been a long-distance onlooker to Michigan‘s fierce rivalry with Ohio State for a very long time, as he coached at Utah for the past 2 decades.
That is no more.
Now, the 66-year-old man who’s never coached at all in the Big Ten is suddenly immersed in the conference and in the rivalry of all rivalries in the league. To nobody’s surprise, when Whittingham stepped foot on the podium at Big Ten Media Days on Thursday in Chicago, he was asked about Michigan’s old rivalry with that school in Ohio.
Michigan has been playing Ohio State in football since 1897, and now it’s Whittingham’s job to make sure the Wolverines are as well prepared to play the Buckeyes as possible. He spoke to reporters on Thursday about the importance of the annual season-ending matchup while also trying not to deflect from what all those other games mean.
Specifically, Whittingham was asked what he’s learned so far about the rivalry since he became Michigan’s head coach.
“I haven’t learned really much more than I already knew. It’s a national game. Everybody knows about it. It’s ‘The Game’ as we call it. It’s a great importance to both sides, obviously,” Whittingham said. “But I’m an old-school coach. We got 11 games that we play before that, so we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves.”
Whittingham had a lot of things to say about a lot of topics on Thursday as he took the podium at Media Days, but that rivalry with Ohio State speaks loudly and means so much.
“Make no mistake, I understand the implications that it has,” he said about the Ohio State game. “Friend of mine, (former Ohio State head coach) Urban Meyer, he was at the other place for a few years. We talked about the game over the course of that time span.
“Very well-versed in what it means, the intensity of it, the national allure that it has. Our players are the same. I mean, everybody knows that that game’s looming out there. I think the best-case scenario, it comes down to that 12th game. That’s for all the marbles in the Big Ten. I think that would be ideal. Hopefully, that happens.”
With that, Whittingham was off to run the show in Ann Arbor this fall, knowing what’s coming at the end of the regular season and how closely his new fandom will be watching how he fares against those hated Buckeyes.
If Whittingham gets his wish, his first Michigan-Ohio State game as the Wolverines head coach will decide who wins the Big Ten in 2026. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about which Big Ten team has the inside track on that coveted conference trophy:
