Usually, the No. 25 Michigan football team considers the upcoming opponent nameless and faceless. For the past eight weeks, the Wolverines’ meetings, practices and discussions inside Schembechler Hall have almost exclusively centered around themselves and their game plan.
This game, as Michigan coach Sherrone Moore emphasized on Monday, is different.
“During training camp, we talk about our rivalries, we talk about every game, we talk about all the big games,” Moore said. “But we’ll definitely re-educate them on what this means. This means a lot. This means everything. … This is a game we put everything into.”
Before Moore was the Wolverines’ head coach, or their offensive coordinator, or their offensive line coach, he was Michigan’s tight ends coach, grabbing former linebacker Devin Bush around his waist and dragging him away from Michigan State’s sideline during the warmups of 2018’s rivalry game. Once Bush stood on the Spartans’ 50-yard line and scuffed up their logo with his cleats, Moore understood the significance of Michigan-Michigan State.
“I was holding Devin back while he was trying to fight half their team,” Moore said. “So, I got introduced fast.”
Eighty percent of the Wolverines’ roster isn’t from the state of Michigan. So Moore and his staff have made a point to educate the team on the history of this rivalry, the Paul Bunyan Trophy and the implications of it all.
And while Michigan’s players might have varying levels of knowledge regarding the rivalry’s history, everyone knows about the hostility, the trash talk and the scuffles that surround and have come to define this game. Those have only increased since Moore joined the Wolverines in 2018, most notably an 2022 incident in Michigan’s tunnel that left several Spartans facing misdemeanor charges after injuring Michigan’s players.
Moore’s message to the team regarding any extracurriculars is clear.
“The biggest thing is that you’re not going to win the game talking, you’re not going to win the game with all the extra stuff,” Moore said. “… None of that helps you win the game. It actually takes away the energy from you winning the game. So all we have to do is rinse, repeat. … We can’t worry about the past, but we can learn from it and learn about those things. So we’re just going to continue to harp on that all that stuff doesn’t matter, just work on things we need to work on to win the game.”
Aside from junior defensive back Brandyn Hillman’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Nebraska, the Wolverines have ultimately kept their energy between the whistles.
But the Spartans aren’t the Cornhuskers. With the extra sense of significance that Saturday’s game carries, Moore wants Michigan to ensure its physicality doesn’t extend beyond the hashes.
“Obviously every game is important, but some mean a little bit more than others,” graduate offensive lineman Giovanni El-Hadi said. “You understand how much this one means.”
El-Hadi was more interested in soccer than football as a kid in Sterling Heights, Mich., but he always rooted for the Spartans when the game was on. He declined Michigan State’s offer in high school, remembered little of the Spartans’ last win over Michigan in 2021 due to a concussion and played every snap when the Wolverines edged out Michigan State in last year’s battle.
Now, as one of the oldest players on one of the youngest teams in the Big Ten, he’s making sure the underclassmen grasp the importance of this game. Because as much as Michigan likes to forget its opponent and focus on itself, Moore, El-Hadi and the rest of the Wolverines know that this game, and this rivalry, is different.
