With a new staff and plenty of new faces around the program, Michigan’s first-year voices are still getting up to speed on what the Michigan-Michigan State game means. Linebackers coach Alex Whittingham is one of them, and on Wednesday he said the education has already started.
Former Michigan offensive lineman Jon Jansen spent time with the team this week, giving players and coaches a crash course on the rivalry’s history and edge. Whittingham said that kind of perspective matters, especially for a staff that is still learning the details of the Paul Bunyan Trophy matchup.
“Mr. Jansen came in and he was great, gave us the whole background,” Whittingham said on Wednesday of Jon Jansen, former Michigan offensive lineman who spoke with the team this week.
“I’ve been a college football fan for a while. That’s why I’m kind of familiar with it.
I’m lucky to have been, you know, in the rivalries back in Utah, those games that they played the last eight years. I’ve seen NFL rivalries, which is a little different flavor to that.
… So experience with rivalries and kind of how they work. Getting educated this week has been eye opening and good, and I’m very excited for this game.”
Whittingham also has a useful piece in his own room. Graduate student Aisea Moa, who spent three years at BYU before last season at Michigan State, gave the linebackers a look at the rivalry from the other side.
“We got Aisea Moa in the room, who is a Michigan State transfer, so he gives us an interesting perspective,” Whittingham said. “I had him speak to the guys in our linebacker room on Monday, just kind of give us a take on where they’re at on the other side and what they’re talking about. So that was good.”
For Whittingham, rivalries aren’t new territory. He played at Utah from 2013-17 and faced BYU every season in the Holy War, a stretch he remembers well.
“As a player, being able to go undefeated against the team down south in Provo, the other team, that was a good experience,” Whittingham said. “I enjoy that and look back on that often.”
He later got a taste of the NFL’s version of that tension, too, when he was on the defensive staff for the Chiefs-Raiders matchup. His first trip into that environment came with a bizarre twist.
“Back in 2018, we played in the Coliseum in Oakland,” Whittingham said. “Conveniently all the coaches got to the locker room, we set our stuff down, went out for warm ups and all that, and we came back and conveniently, the plumbing had overflowed out of the toilets and gone onto all our stuff.
It was crazy how it happened. First and last time playing there for me, so that was inevitable, I guess.”
Even without direct experience in this particular rivalry, Whittingham said the staff is doing what it can to get ready. Jansen’s visit, Moa’s perspective and the lessons from his own past have helped shape that preparation.
And that’s enough to have him ready for Saturday night.
“I’m fired up, excited, and to be in front of our own fans, it’s gonna be great,” Whittingham said.
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