Kyle Whittingham Takes a Very Different Approach to the Michigan-Ohio State Rivalry
Kyle Whittingham is running Michigan football now, and he is not going to spend the whole season obsessing over Ohio State. That is a jarring change of tone from Ann Arbor.
The new Wolverines head coach sat down with ESPN this week and gave the safest possible answer about the rivalry. Yes, it matters. Yes, it is the biggest game in the sport. No, he is not going to burn a whole season worrying about it before Michigan plays the other 11 games on the schedule.
“It’s the biggest rivalry in the country, in our opinion. It’s something that’s in the back of my mind every day,” Whittingham said. “But I am old school and I believe in taking it one game at a time, and we’ve got 11 games to play before we get to that game, so we can’t obsess over it, at least not just yet.”
For a Michigan head coach, that is practically heresy. Jim Harbaugh built his entire program around beating Ohio State. He wore beat-Ohio-State t-shirts. He talked about the game year-round. He wired his players to hate scarlet and gray from the second they arrived on campus.
Whittingham does not have that background. He spent two decades at Utah, where the biggest rivalry was BYU, and he knows the difference between passion and obsession. He wants a program that plays disciplined football every week, not one that peaks in November and lays eggs against Iowa in October.
There is a reason Michigan hired him. The program had gotten stale under Sherrone Moore. The Wolverines got smoked by Ohio State last year, ending a four-year streak in the rivalry. The talent gap that Harbaugh spent years closing had opened back up. Michigan needed a reset.
Whittingham brings 20 years of head coaching experience and a reputation for building tough, physical teams. He also brings zero emotional baggage about a rivalry he has watched from a distance for two decades. That neutrality might actually be an advantage.
Ohio State fans should not read this as Michigan giving up. Whittingham is not conceding the rivalry. He is just refusing to build his entire season around one game before he even gets his players on the field.
The Buckeyes are going to be loaded. Julian Sayin is a Heisman contender at quarterback. Jeremiah Smith is the best wide receiver in college football. Ryan Day has his most talented team in years. Michigan is going to be an underdog when those two teams play in November, and everyone knows it.
That is exactly why Whittingham is right to lower the temperature. If Michigan tries to make every practice about Ohio State from day one, they will fold under the pressure. The team he inherited needs to build confidence week to week, not stew about one game they might lose.
The old-school approach also fits the roster. Michigan is not a national title contender in 2026. They are trying to get back to being a top-15 team. Winning nine or ten games would be a huge step forward. Beating Ohio State would be a bonus, not the entire measurement of a season.
Michigan fans will not love hearing this. They want the coach to hate Ohio State the way Harbaugh did. Whittingham is telling them to be patient. Given how last year went, patience is exactly what this program needs.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
