Kyle Whittingham didn’t come to Michigan sounding like a man eager to pour gasoline on the Ohio State rivalry. If anything, the new Wolverines coach used his first big public platform at Big Ten media days to do the opposite: cool the temperature, strip away the theater, and draw a line between intensity and outright hate.
“I just think a rivalry can be intense and emotional without the hatred factor. I don’t think there’s any place for that personally,” Whittingham said via Chase Brown of Eleven Warriors.
“I think [Buckeyes coach] Ryan Day is a good person. To sit here and say I hate Ryan Day, I’d be making crap up because that’s not true.”
That kind of bluntness has helped make Whittingham such an appealing figure in Ann Arbor since Michigan hired him in December. He has long carried himself like the anti-drama candidate, and on Thursday he leaned even harder into that image while talking about the sport’s most combustible matchup.
Whittingham also made clear that he has no interest in turning the rivalry into a personal grudge. He pointed to Urban Meyer, the former Ohio State coach who once replaced him at Utah after Whittingham took over as the Utes’ full-time head coach in Dec. 2004.
They remain friends, and Whittingham said Meyer would still be welcome around his team - with one obvious exception.
“If Urban wants to come to practice, he can come every week but one,” Whittingham said. “There’s one week he can’t come.”
That line fits Whittingham’s style: sharp, but not reckless. And it lands against the backdrop of a rivalry that has gotten uglier by the year. Ohio State and Michigan have spent more than a century trading blows, but this decade has pushed the series into stranger, nastier territory.
The 2020 game was canceled because of COVID-19 considerations, which was treated in some Ohio State circles as Michigan backing out. Then came the Wolverines’ run of wins in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 - a stretch that included a quasi-blowout, a tight game that turned into a laugher, a thriller, and one of the biggest upsets in the series.
The 2023 meeting was overshadowed by Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal, and Moore later emotionally thanked the suspended Harbaugh afterward. In 2024, things got even messier when a group of Wolverines tried to plant a flag at midfield in Ohio Stadium after the game, sparking a near-brawl and leading Columbus police to use pepper spray on national television.
That’s a lot of baggage for one rivalry, and it goes well beyond football. The source material points to the growing sociopolitical undertones between Michigan and Ohio as the states have moved in different directions since the 2008 economic downturn.
Still, there’s a case to be made for hard-edged rivalries if they stay inside the lines. The source also notes that sports can use more competition that settles itself on the field instead of spilling into violence or empty spectacle.
Whittingham, though, comes from a different kind of rivalry culture. At Utah, the Holy War with BYU is built on a shared world as much as a divided one, with fans often crossing paths in everyday life.
That series has also been shaped in part by the relationship between Whittingham and BYU coach Kalani Sitake, who played for the Cougars, worked under Whittingham at Utah, and has spoken warmly about him. Whittingham has returned that respect.
And the results under Whittingham have backed up the calm. Utah beat BYU nine straight times in the 2010s, went 12-3 against Colorado with seven straight wins from 2017 to 2023, and finished 8-1 against Utah State.
So if Michigan was looking for a coach who knows how to win rivalries without feeding the circus, it found one. Whittingham’s message on Thursday was plain enough: keep the edge, lose the venom.
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