InkBlog

Some of this happens the way you think it does.

And some of it is nowhere near as theatrical as you might want it to be.

Kodi Kieler got to Michigan State in 2012 as an in-state offensive line prospect from Carlson High School in Gibraltar. But before he’d ever received a locker, he — along with any other incoming recruit — was fully aware of the main event inside Mark Dantonio’s program. If you’re going to play for the steely-eyed defensive expert who cut his teeth in major college football with Nick Saban in East Lansing back in the mid-’90s before winning a national championship with Jim Tressel at Ohio State, you had to know your enemy.

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That’d be Michigan. No gray area, no lack of clarity. The school an hour south with the big stadium, the big money and the historical affinity to let you know about both was the primary target all season. From the start of fall camp, at least once a week, Dantonio’s team would go through something Michigan-related. Maybe it would be five minutes of film one day or an on-field drill to simulate a tight fourth-quarter situation in what they knew would be an intense environment.

Everyone knew the expectation. Because the tone was set at the top.

“There was a reason we went out there, whether we were having a good year or bad year, and just played our asses off against Michigan,” said Kieler, who was around for five Michigan-Michigan State games from 2012-16. “You just knew this guy cared so much about beating those guys.

“Whether it was the arrogance thing. Or the ‘little brother’ thing. Yeah, he hated that shit.”

This part, everyone knows.

But here comes a misconception.

Plenty believed for years, perhaps due to Michigan’s relatively consistent success inside this rivalry throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, that the Wolverines didn’t care as much as their in-state brothers about the game that annually splits households and stops traffic inside the state every fall.

Michigan has always had split loyalties when it comes to rivalries. The bout with Ohio State will always take top billing for players wearing winged helmets. Notre Dame has also been sprinkled in. For a long time, Michigan State probably was third in that pecking order.

But to say Michigan’s locker room goes about its business simply ignoring the team to its north? That might make for a good plot in a movie.

But this ain’t no fairy tale.

“Let’s say Michigan loses a (Michigan State) game and fans think we didn’t prep or take it as seriously as the other side,” said former Michigan fullback Jared Wangler, who was around for five rivalry games from 2014-18. “That always sticks out to me. We lost that 2015 game on the crazy blocked punt and fans are like, ‘Oh, the Michigan State guys come out and they care more and it means more to them.’

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“They don’t see it. The preparation we go through all year. The extra workouts and reps, just specifically geared toward our hatred for Michigan State and Ohio State.”

Dantonio’s run against Michigan has been well-documented. He’s 8-4 against the Wolverines. He’s also seen four different head coaches during his run. He went 0-1 against Lloyd Carr, 3-0 against Rich Rodriguez and 3-1 against Brady Hoke. Perhaps Rodriguez’s three-year tenure was doomed no matter what. But if Hoke had been able to find more success against Dantonio’s MSU teams (he was outscored 102-43 in four years), he might have had a fighting argument to survive longer than four years.

As Michigan went through a brutal seven-season process during which the program fired two coaches and went through three restarts, Dantonio secured multiple Big Ten titles, got MSU back to the Rose Bowl and found the type of rivalry success against the once-feared in-state power that hadn’t been seen in decades.

Then came Dec. 30, 2014. Jim Harbaugh showed up, along with all the outside attention that came from Harbaugh’s off-field antics and recruiting methods. So much noise. Dantonio was asked for his reaction to the hire at the Cotton Bowl, firmly in the midst of six wins in seven years over the Wolverines at the time. He brushed it off and made sure to point out that his program was playing in a New Year’s Six bowl game. Michigan’s program, meantime, was sitting at home with a sub-.500 record and its fourth coach in less than a decade.

Harbaugh played in an era when Michigan was an annual Big Ten title contender and Michigan State was, more or less, just a team in the Big Ten. But he also spent his formative years growing up in the state. His father coached at Michigan. He broke his arm in a game against the Spartans as a player.

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When Hoke was in Ann Arbor, there were a few corny traditions that happened during rivalry weeks. No one was allowed to wear green (or red, for Ohio State) in the building. He put up rivalry countdown clocks. During an MSU game week, the scout team taped up their helmets to mimic a Spartan logo.

Harbaugh threw the countdown clocks in the trash. He told people to wear whatever the hell they wanted. No one needed to tape up their helmet. All that outside noise people saw meant nothing when it was time for football. He brought a level of seriousness and gravitas to moments like this that the roster hadn’t seen in a while. He didn’t feel like he needed to tell his locker room how important it was to start being competitive against an in-state rival that had been busy kicking its ass for the better part of a decade.

They figured it out.

All you need is to “see their logo on the game plan,” Wangler said. “And everyone just kind of knows. It’s that time.”

Through four seasons against each other, Harbaugh and Dantonio sit at 2-2. Saturday’s game in Ann Arbor will be Chapter 5. Michigan is 7-2 and hoping to finish out the year strong. MSU is 4-5 and hoping to get the car out of the ditch.

But this week, that stuff truly is irrelevant.

The two coaches have, of course, had their share of public exchanges that leave the impression neither will ever spend time together at social functions once their football careers are over.

In 2017, Dantonio brushed off questions about being sent to a perceived lesser bowl than Michigan despite getting a win over the Wolverines earlier that season. Dantonio said he wasn’t worried about it, claiming he’d continue to focus on beating Michigan and let everything else sort itself out. Harbaugh, as he’s done before, took to Twitter with his message: “Saw Coach D comments on continuing to ‘focus’ on how ‘he’ can beat Michigan. Congrats on turning around a 3-9 team, plagued with off field issues. Good for BIG to have him back.” Dantonio, of course, responded with his trademark line about how this rivalry will “never be over.”

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Last season brought another episode, after Michigan State’s entire roster had an encounter with a handful of Michigan players on the field at Spartan Stadium hours before kickoff, resulting in Devin Bush Jr. shredding the midfield logo with his cleats. Harbaugh blamed Michigan State for the encounter, calling the whole thing “bush league” before noting that Dantonio stood behind the entire confrontation “smiling.” Dantonio responded by saying that was “BS” before calling the situation “juvenile.”

But what many outside observers don’t see, or maybe realize, is that both these coaches have an ability to separate the nonsense from the actual football. They don’t run their programs the same way. They don’t agree with everything the other does.

But when it comes to actual football, you’re not going to find two coaches who respect one another’s ability more than Harbaugh and Dantonio.

He’s done “one of the best college football coaching jobs in the history of the game,” Harbaugh said before the rivalry game in 2015. “At the highest level.”

Harbaugh went after Dantonio hard last season following the pregame dust-up. He wasn’t thrilled with how any of it happened and he seemed to absolutely fault MSU for part of that. But when this week rolled around, and it was time to talk about football again, everything got serious. He spent most of his Monday news conference repeating over and over about how Dantonio forces Michigan to be on “high alert” for everything in a game like this.

He dubbed Dantonio a “master motivator.” That’s not a dig. That’s a compliment. He knows this from personal experience, as Dantonio’s team was able to pull off the most improbable win in the history of the series back in 2015 before grinding out a rainstorm victory in Ann Arbor in 2017. Even during the 2016 game, when Michigan State was a mess, the Spartans gave then-unbeaten and No. 2-ranked Michigan more of a game than anyone figured possible.

Harbaugh didn’t discover Dantonio the minute he showed up at Michigan. He respects football as much as anyone in America. He knows a great coach when he sees one. And he’s never been one to let personal disagreements get in the way of his admiration for someone else who has demonstrated a proven ability to serve the sport.

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Dantonio? Same thing.

“The guy is a hall of fame coach,” Dantonio said of Harbaugh on Tuesday. “Whether it’s NFL or college.”

Some may see comments like these as gamesmanship. Neither person trying to give the other something to add to the bulletin board. But I don’t see it that way. Football coaches, through all their disagreements, have an ability to understand each other in a way the rest of us will never be able to. They know how much time they spend away from their families. How much sacrifice they put into this game. How many times they wake up at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling, wondering if they’ve done enough to prepare their roster for what’s about to happen.

Personal disagreements? Sure. But football’s football. This game doesn’t lie and respect doesn’t come easy. When you’ve earned it, you’ve earned it. Both these coaches are fully aware of that.

Social media has done its part in igniting rivalry fires all over the country. This one is no different. Michigan and Michigan State don’t like each other. Both programs spend their week leading up to the game carefully instructing players not to say anything controversial. Harbaugh has, since the day he arrived, hammered this home to his roster behind the scenes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s not for lack of trying.

Michigan State, meantime, changes its media availability schedule for the Michigan game. Instead of a large array of players speaking after practice, Dantonio allows only captains to talk in the media room just after his Tuesday public address.

There’s a perception here that the bulletin board works one way: That Dantonio takes every quote anyone from U-M has ever said about MSU and pastes it everywhere. Some of that happens, sure. But Michigan’s not opposed to doing the same thing. Like in the summer of 2016, when MSU linebacker Chris Frey sent out the tweet: “100 days till y’all get locked in the woodshed,” with the hashtag of “no escape” tagged on the end.

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“Yeah, that gets sent around in group chats,” Wangler said. “And that’s just the offseason.”

But when the game starts? Most of the nonsense stops. Players will scrap through the whistle. There will be hits behind the play. No one wants to be on the bottom of a pile.

But these games don’t generally turn into a petty verbal exchange between two siblings trying to needle one another.

Why?

“Because everyone’s so (focused) on not trying to (screw it up),” Kieler said.

Before the game, perception rings true. Afterward? Same thing. No one likes each other. Players talk. The winners rub it in. The losers leave enraged.

But for four quarters one Saturday in the fall, reality sets in.

Michigan and Michigan State, in their current forms, respect the hell out of what the other brings to the table between the lines. Because they know, the second that changes, it’ll be their side who has to live with that pain for 12 months.

(Top photo: Brad Mills / USA Today)

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