Ahead of last Saturday’s season opener, Kyle Whittingham’s face was hard to find in Ann Arbor.

It wasn’t in any of the many gift shops along State Street, nor in the official campus bookstore — “but that would have been a great idea!” one employee told me.

He wasn’t on the cover of the 2026 Michigan Football Yearbook. And he wasn’t posing on any billboards along I-94 to support kidney treatment.

But make no mistake: He’s here, and before the game, fans were darn happy to have him.

“I’m glad an adult is running the program again,” one middle-aged man in a blue branded polo told me Saturday afternoon. “I’m hoping for big things. But mostly, I’m just glad an adult is running the program again.”

That was a common sentiment heading into what was supposed to be a tuneup against Mid-American Conference foe Western Michigan. The Broncos won the MAC last year, and were picked to win it again, but come on. This is Michigan, no directional prefix required. This is The Big House™. The Wolverines had never lost to Western. They paid the Broncos $1.5 million to visit Ann Arbor for a string-tightening beatdown ahead of their Week 2 matchup against Oklahoma.

That’s what was supposed to happen. What fans expected to happen with a professional like Kyle Whittingham in charge.

“You want a guy with a chip on his shoulder. And I think he might have one.”

—  John Bacon, Michigan football historian

His face, sporting a stubbly goatee, finally appears a few minutes after 5 p.m. I hear him before I see him thanks to a police escort. Motorcycle sirens led Michigan’s black tour buses through a parted sea of humanity, then hiss to a stop for the “Wolverine Walk.” Many schools have similar entrance traditions, but the Wolverine Walk is new. Whittingham introduced it. He rode shotgun in the first bus down the line, easily visible from far away thanks to a Michigan polo so white it seemed to be glowing.

“There he is,” a nearby fan tells me. For a while, he sits and waits for his players to hop off, shaking their hands. But suddenly he is up and he is ready, just as the fans are ready to receive him.

“Coach!” screams one young man in a psychedelic tank top. “Coach! Deliver us to the promised land!”

Wolverine Walk was supposed to begin at 5:20 p.m., yet by 5:21 it’s over. Whittingham arrived early. He also dressed his players in maize-on-maize uniforms for only the third time in Michigan’s 147-year football history, which together sent a clear message: This is his team now, and he’ll do things his way. This is a new era for Michigan football, and he has indeed come to deliver the Wolverines back to the promised land. That’s what everyone watching seems to feel and hope as Whittingham and his entourage shuffle out of sight down the Lloyd Carr tunnel, swallowed whole by the towering red-brick Romanesque arches of The Big House’s eastern façade.

Inside, an official capacity of 107,601 — the largest stadium in the world outside India and North Korea — is, for the moment, empty. For such a massive coliseum, The Big House is surprisingly straightforward: one big, uniform bowl, with a few luxury boxes and video boards crowning the edges. By 7:30, it’s full — and then some. Western’s handful of brown-clad fans aren’t even visible in the mass of maize and blue, which feels appropriate, since everyone else here feels certain they know how tonight will end. That’s how it always feels at the beginning.

But in football, there’s the way things are supposed to go — and then there’s the way they happen.

Carousel of excess

There he is again, this time standing once more in the Lloyd Carr tunnel, behind his players. When Whittingham first appeared on the video board, he led the way — but then he dropped back into the maw. This isn’t about him, this is about them — or so his movement seems to suggest. He’s content, for the moment, to linger in the background.

On the field, the marching band has parted, leaving a path for players and coaches to emerge at the 50-yard line. All of them must pass beneath the “GO BLUE” banner that players have leapt toward and tapped since 1962. The speakers blast a hype video narrated by Michigan alum James Earl Jones. A well-above-capacity 110,879 fans, emboldened by new expectations, roar like starving animals about to be fed. Wolverines players, as always, leap toward the “GO BLUE” sign. Whittingham does, too, when his turn comes. He hops and taps without any fanfare, even for his first time, looking like a man with little to prove.

He’s earned that composure. In 21 seasons as Utah’s head coach, he won 177 games — more than anyone in program history. There was an undefeated season. A Sugar Bowl upset of Alabama. Two Rose Bowls. And three times in three tries, he beat these very Wolverines — twice right here at The Big House.

The bar to best his predecessor’s tenure in Ann Arbor, meanwhile, rests deep within the crust of the Earth.

“When your head coach spends the last day of his career in the Washtenaw County Jail,” says historian John Bacon, the preeminent chronicler of Michigan football, “things have not gone according to plan.”

But the end result, for the Wolverines and their new coach, feels fated: Michigan — rudderless, plagued by scandal and entering the coaching market later than everyone else — finds a readily available coach known for discipline, decency, loyalty and, of course, excellence. “It’s the kind of coach and coaching resume,” says NBC Sports college football insider Nicole Auerbach, “that you don’t expect to just suddenly be available.”

Yet here he is, settling into a spot on the near sideline, mumbling into his headset, perhaps the coach who least embodies today’s carousel madness — and the one most recently bucked from it. Will his old-school success — built by his father’s scheme; a culture of toughness and discipline; and a loyal, familiar coaching tree — translate to a new era? And will the man himself, who will be old enough to collect full Social Security benefits starting Sept. 21, be up for the challenge?

Little to prove, after all, is not the same as nothing. Whittingham has never won a Rose Bowl, never competed in the Big 10, never won it all. Michigan claims 13 national championships — more than all but Alabama and Notre Dame among modern FBS teams. The possibilities are there. Yet lately, the school has suffered through some duds.

Rich Rodriguez, Brady Hoke and most recently Sherrone Moore were all failures. Jim Harbaugh led the Wolverines to a title as recently as 2023, sure, but he was Michigan through and through. Whittingham is an outsider, as was Rodriguez.

“There were factions that decided they didn’t want him,” says Auerbach, who was a Michigan student back then. “It wasn’t going to work right from the jump.”

Bacon, meanwhile, likens any head coaching hire to a heart transplant: “You better know,” he explains, “that the blood types are the same.” If not, the organ will be rejected.

Can Whittingham swap 32 years of Utah red for blue-blooded Michigan?

“He is about as close to Bo Schembechler in terms of demeanor and approach and old-school blocking and tackling as you can probably find in the modern game,” says Bacon, referring to the legendary Michigan coach. That’s high praise from a guy who wrote a book about Bo — a book, Whittingham told him, he’s listened to 30 times.

“You want a guy with a chip on his shoulder,” Bacon adds. “And I think he might have one.”

Whittingham didn’t say as much when he spoke with Bacon, so the suggestion is Bacon’s alone. Yet, “Why else do you take a job like this?” Whittingham would only be here, he reasons, if he were hungry for more than what he already has.

The task before him affords very little patience, but at 66, Whittingham doesn’t have much time anyway. And before it runs out, he hopes to prove not just himself but a whole philosophy. Just have a look at his coaching staff, bringing up the rear in the convoy of bodies taking the field at The Big House: Almost all of them are new, and many have been imported straight from Utah.

Presiding over them from the booth above are Whittingham’s two biggest hires: Offensive coordinator Jason Beck and defensive coordinator Jay Hill, who played at BYU and Utah, respectively, and whose coaching credits both include stints at Utah, BYU and Weber State — a combined 33 years, longer than Whittingham’s tenure with the Utes. Kyle Whittingham has brought with him to Michigan a way of coaching; a culture. It’s the same playbook Curt Cignetti used at Indiana to win the most unexpected national championship since 1984, though it comes with its own risks.

“He played just like he coaches. The guy was an animal.”

—  Val Hale, former BYU athletic director

Whittingham’s biggest “gaffe” came when a reporter asked if he’d learned to hate Ohio State. Whittingham chuckled. “I’ve learned how intense the rivalry is, how important that game is,” he said. “Hate’s a strong word, but I wanna win that game as badly as anybody in Ann Arbor.” That triggered a chain reaction among fans; did Whittingham not “get” Michigan?

Later, back in Ann Arbor, another reporter mentioned the fallout. Whittingham interrupted.

“Would we have a better chance to win if I hated ’em?” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I mean, I don’t understand. Whatever gives us the best chance to win, I’m all for. I wanna beat ’em worse than anybody around. So I don’t know how that got to be such a hot topic.”

Then he apologized for interrupting. “What was your question?”

To even reach the preseason-No. 1 Buckeyes, No. 16 Michigan will host No. 10 Oklahoma, No. 22 Iowa, No. 18 Penn State and No. 6 Indiana before traveling to No. 2 Oregon. It’s one of the nation’s hardest schedules, but that’s the job. And that’s why Whittingham is here.

Even on this day, against unranked Western Michigan, the stands rumble as Whittingham claps — that strange cupped-hand motion, scooping the air — and looks out at this cathedral built by others. Now it falls to him to resurrect it with imported tools, forged a long time ago. Around him the crowd swells, for now, with a noise both foreign and familiar, 110,879 voices lifted by new hope and old history.

Fred’s son, Utah’s man

Everyone starts with Fred.

Kyle Whittingham is just like his dad, they say — right down to the still-chiseled jawline, though minus the mustache Fred “Mad Dog” Whittingham sometimes wore. He even claps like him.

“I’m not kidding you,” says Norm Chow, the longtime BYU offensive coordinator and, briefly, Whittingham’s offensive coordinator at Utah. “Kind of cupping his hands up and down. Just like his dad used to do.”

Steve Young, the legendary BYU quarterback, remembers more how Fred talked. “He kind of spat out words at you,” Young says. “Even when he was being nice, it sounded like, ‘What do you want?’”

Young first met the younger Whittingham as a BYU freshman, running the scout team offense. Kyle was a starting senior linebacker, and Young was embarrassing him with scrambles. After one play, Whittingham lifted Young off the ground, carried him off the field, rammed him into a fence and told him to knock it off.

“He played just like he coaches,” adds Val Hale, the former BYU athletic director. “The guy was an animal.”

After BYU, Whittingham knocked around the coaching minor leagues before following his father to Utah in 1994.

“(Fred) said he’d be tougher on Kyle than any assistant coach,” former Utah AD Chris Hill remembers. “I believed him, and it was true.”

Kyle quickly impressed then-head coach Ron McBride.

“He was all about business,” McBride remembers. “Good technician. Smart guy. Hardworking guy.”

Which was just what Utah needed. McBride had inherited the program in 1990 and found it “very soft.” His solution was “Camp Carbon.”

“The guy I was most scared of was Kyle.”

—  John Frank, former Utah defensive end

When former Utes defensive end John Frank joined the program in 1996, he remembers spending “two, sometimes three days” down in Price, seat of Carbon County, for often-brutal two-a-day practices.

“It was horrible,” he says, sounding like a former combatant who has seen things. With toughness prized, injuries were common. One small dose of levity was an annual talent show, which always included players roasting coaches.

“But I don’t remember Kyle ever being the subject of any joke,” Frank says. “I think everyone was scared to make fun of him.”

Kyle in those days was a fearsome figure, at least to players. “Kyle is Fred Jr., basically,” Frank adds. “You see where he gets his toughness from.”

When Frank once got pulled over for speeding in Emigration Canyon and told the officer he’d done it “just for fun,” McBride pulled him into his office for a scolding — and a second chance.

“But the guy I was most scared of,” Frank remembers, “was Kyle.”

During the team’s next practice, Frank spotted him during stretches. He hid his face by touching his toes, hoping Whittingham would walk past.

“Frank,” he said, followed by what felt like an interminable pause. “I hope you play defensive end like that.” Then he walked away. “I knew then,” Frank says, “I was gonna run through a wall for that guy.”

Fred retired in 2001 and died two years later. Kyle, who by then had spent almost 10 years as Utah’s defensive coordinator, told his wife that sometimes, he still feels his dad’s presence while coaching — like Fred’s right there on the sideline with him.

Soon after, Utah fired McBride and replaced him with Urban Meyer.

“Urban didn’t even hesitate,” says Hill, who hired Meyer. “He wanted Kyle even before he met him.”

His scheme wasn’t complicated — “It’s all Fred,” Chow says — but it was fundamentally sound, physical and dared opponents to challenge it. “‘So what if you know where I’m at? You better beat me’ — that’s Kyle Whittingham. And that’s what I think has made his career.”

‘I love it here’

When Meyer left for Florida in 2005, Hill never considered anyone but Kyle to replace him — though, he did have to fend off stiff competition from Whittingham’s alma mater.

“Come home,” Young remembers pitching him. “Finish the swing and come home.”

Yet Young thinks loyalty is the wrong frame of reference. Staying was the issue. And it wasn’t the only time. In 2010, Tennessee also courted Whittingham with an offer that would have doubled his Utah salary. BYU’s Kalani Sitake, then Whittingham’s defensive coordinator, remembers a 1 a.m. phone call from his then-boss: “Let’s stay,” Whittingham told him, “and make it awesome here.”

From then on, staying defined Whittingham’s career — until the choice to stay was no longer his.

His finest hour began in 2008, with a trip to The Big House to spoil Rodriguez’s debut, 25-23. Utah would keep winning, including over No. 11 TCU and No. 16 BYU, closing the regular season at No. 7 with an invitation to the Sugar Bowl versus Nick Saban’s Alabama. The Utes entered the postseason as the nation’s only undefeated team, but that wasn’t enough to earn a BCS National Championship berth; they had to settle for a 14-point beatdown of the Crimson Tide. After the game, Whittingham was livid.

“I know where I’m voting us,” he said. “I’m voting us No. 1. End of story.”

Whittingham said he didn’t understand why the Utes were overlooked, but as ESPN wrote a few years later, “Let’s call a spade a spade. He knew why.” Utah’s competition was inferior to title contenders like Florida and Oklahoma. Yet when a reporter from Utah’s student newspaper asked whether he would be leaving amid his success, Whittingham didn’t flinch. “Am I going to leave? No. No. I love it here,” he said. “I’m not all into looking for that next job, I never have been. Never will be.”

Unlike so many — really, almost all — successful college coaches who have ever claimed to be happy at a mid-major right before leaving town on a private jet with a suitcase full of cash and a colorful new hat, Kyle Whittingham kept his word. He stayed.

By 2015, the Utes had ascended to the Pac-12, climbed as high as No. 3, then faded — as they always seemed to.

Three years later, junior quarterback Tyler Huntley helped Utah reach its first Pac-12 Championship game, then did so again as a senior.

“We were just working on everything necessary to be a great team,” says Huntley, who has managed a lengthy NFL career backing up Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson. “And he harped on that every day, from ball security all the way down to ending plays. So it was pretty dope.”

But Huntley’s Utes failed to win a Pac-12 title. That came under Cam Rising in 2021. The Utes made the Rose Bowl against No. 6 Ohio State and led by 14 on three different occasions, but the Buckeyes came back and won 48-45. Next year was the same story: conference title, Rose Bowl, loss to a Big Ten foe.

Whittingham’s Utah tenure was a success in almost every way. The irony now is that the system he rejected for two decades is what finally delivered him to a place with the resources to turn almost into something more.

“I know you’re not done with football,” Huntley told him during a phone call after Whittingham announced his resignation from Utah. “I know it’s gonna be hard to keep you away.”

Mutually beneficial arrangement

Whittingham had thought about leaving since at least 2024, when Utah announced defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as head coach in waiting. But last season, after a successful 10-2 campaign, Whittingham decided to stick around and asked for a raise, as well as a boost for his staff.

Utah countered with a much smaller raise, as well as a requirement to cede many of his responsibilities to Scalley, who administrators feared would leave to pursue other coaching opportunities. The school, it was clear, saw Scalley as the future, and was content to let Whittingham stick around, basically, as head coach in name only.

He resigned instead on Dec. 12, just two days after Michigan had fired Sherrone Moore for cause due to his romantic relationship with a staffer. Moore was arrested the same day and charged with home invasion, stalking, and breaking and entering.

Michigan didn’t hire Whittingham until Dec. 26, and by then, it was becoming clear that Whittingham’s break from Utah wasn’t as clean as many assumed.

“It seems like he got the short end of the stick at Utah,” Chow says. “Which is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.”

The feeling on the other side, it seems, was mutual.

“As you know, the University was disappointed by your actions,” Utah AD Mark Harlan wrote in a January letter sent to Whittingham. Harlan felt his former coach had violated his employment agreement, which “requires you to assist with a smooth and successful transition of the football program to the new head coach and his coaching staff.”

However, rather than pursue legal action, Harlan enclosed a check for $8,013,808.20 and a final word: “We wish you well.”

Last week, in an appearance on the “Dan Patrick Show,” Whittingham was asked whether it was fair to call his separation from Utah mutual.

“Uhhh, that’s probably on some people’s part back there, yeah, I’d say, depending on who you talk to,” Whittingham said. “Overstaying my welcome was something I made a conscious decision not to do several years ago,” he added, and he felt like that time had come.

Harlan did have reason to be upset: Whittingham poached six of his former Utah assistants to bring along to Michigan, along with Hill from BYU. But if Harlan was upset about losing them, consider what it says about Whittingham that they chose to follow him. Every one of them left a good job to chase a 66-year-old Mountain West lifer into a new unknown.

The dream and the nightmare

Everyone said Kyle Whittingham was the right man for Michigan at the right time. Everyone — national reporters, Michigan insiders, casual fans on the street — was so sure leading up to the season opener against Western that even mild skepticism was hard to find. And, after a clinical game-opening touchdown drive led by sophomore quarterback Bryce Underwood, they were all the more certain still. But in high-level football, you just never know.

Underwood was erratic from the start — he threw into coverage repeatedly, got bailed out twice by technicalities, and threw an interception to close the first half. By halftime, the fans were booing.

Underwood could be the lynchpin to Whittingham’s Michigan fortunes. “Last year he didn’t really develop from Week 1 to the end of the season,” Auerbach says of the nation’s former top recruit. Whittingham assured everyone that Underwood had come a long way since the spring, but if his performance against Western is any indication, he still has a long way to go.

To him, Huntley offers a potential remedy: “Embrace the culture.”

Because it is indeed a culture Whittingham has brought to Ann Arbor — on the field and off.

A tree uprooted

In the past, John Larsen would have watched Michigan’s coach jog into the locker room on TV — if the BYU grad watched Michigan at all. But tonight, John — president of the Ann Arbor Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and his wife, Laurel, are seated somewhere in Section 19 of The Big House, so they watch him disappear in person.

John has to be up by 7 a.m. tomorrow, when he’s due for meetings down the road in Saline before services begin at 10. But if supporting Whittingham and his Utah entourage means risking the temptation to sleep in, well, so be it. He’s willing to make that sacrifice.

“We’ve not gone to a lot of games before,” he tells me in his living room the night before the game, laughing, “but now it becomes my ecclesiastical responsibility, I think.”

Besides: He expects Michigan defensive coordinator Jay Hill to be there, too.

Hill probably has the deepest Utah roots outside Whittingham himself, having spent 13 years with the Utes, nine at Weber State and four at BYU. Other transplants, outside the aforementioned Beck, include:

• Quarterbacks coach Koy Detmer; played at BYU and coached at Utah
• Cornerbacks coach Jernaro Gilford; played at BYU and coached 10 years at BYU, two at Southern Utah University
• Offensive line coach Jim Harding; coached 12 seasons at Utah
• Defensive ends coach Lewis Powell; played at Utah, coached 11 years at Utah
• Receivers coach Micah Simon; played at BYU, coached a year at Utah and a year under Bronco Mendenhall at New Mexico
• Linebackers coach (and Kyle’s son) Alex Whittingham; played at Utah, coached under Andy Reid in Kansas City
• Tight ends coach Freddie Whittingham; played at BYU, 14 years at Utah

Notice that Whittingham didn’t just bring guys from the “University” of Utah; he brought guys from the “state” — much to the annoyance of BYU fans. “There’s not a BYU fan alive who won’t attest to the talents and abilities of Jay Hill,” Hale says.

“That stung,” adds Young. “Trust me on that one. That one stung.”

Young doesn’t blame Hill, nor anyone else who followed Whittingham to Ann Arbor. First of all, Young says, because Whittingham is a great coach and Michigan is a great program. But there’s something else, too. Whittingham, he believes, isn’t the only one with something to prove.

“When I was playing for the 49ers for many years, I could feel the East Coast-West Coast ‘bias,’” Young says. “Having the people in Michigan, the blue-blood Michiganders, say, ‘The guy from Utah, let’s take him’ — that says a lot. … Him coaching at Michigan is kind of showing that we’re growing into a real something that is respected nationwide.”

To earn more lasting respect, though, will require winning. Michigan administrators believed enough in Whittingham to give him an opportunity to prove himself. Whittingham believes in his guys enough to give them the same chance. Whether the approach works at Michigan remains an open question. That it exists at all, in the carousel era, is remarkable.

It was Hill who first reached out to Larsen soon after he moved to Michigan. Larsen had wondered, since Michigan first hired Whittingham, what having Latter-day Saints on the staff of the football program could look like for the local church.

“People (in the Latter-day Saint community) took note and said, ‘Wow, this could be good for us,’” he says.

Hill seemed especially eager to involve himself. He recently delivered a fireside to Ann Arbor missionaries.

“I heard it was amazing,” Larsen says. The way he tells it, the mission president asked for Hill’s contact info.

But not so fast. “It was the other way around,” Laurel Larsen says.

It was Hill who took the initiative to speak with the missionaries.

Laurel Larsen brought ear plugs to the game because she took Hill at his word. “We need fans showing up being crazy, being loud,” he said in an interview posted earlier in the week. “Obviously, we want to be respectful toward our opponents, but there’s no decibel limit on being respectful.”

John Larsen loved that last bit, just like he loved Whittingham’s Ohio State remarks. “I know that people are upset by it, but it’s like, ‘Hey, we don’t have to hate,’” he tells me. “You can be a fierce competitor, and you don’t have to bring hatred into it. And so I love that he can show that, and I’m OK if it causes a little bit of a stir.”

Heck, he welcomes a stir rooted in virtue — something Michigan hasn’t had to worry about recently. But no amount of virtue can validate Utah’s football culture in the eyes of the nation.

Only winning can.

The way things happen

The Wolverines do win in the end, but they probably shouldn’t have. Not only because of the controversial “Clock Gate” fiasco, but because Western Michigan bullied them. The Broncos were more physical and more disciplined; they beat Whittingham’s squad at what was supposed to be his own game. And if not for the Hail Mary heard ’round college football, Whittingham would have suffered Michigan’s worst loss since Rodriguez fell against Toledo in ’08.

After the game, Wolverines defensive end Dom Nichols sums up the mood when asked what it was like to “live in the moment” of fans storming the field after the stunning, last-second twist of fate.

“That wasn’t a moment we really wanted to be living in,” he says. “I mean, it’s Western Michigan.”

And Saturday, No. 10 Oklahoma — which tuned up by decimating UTEP, 51-0 — comes to The Big House. Last year, the Sooners beat Michigan and made the College Football Playoff. If the Wolverines’ performance against WMU is indicative of anything, they could be cruising toward a blowout — and at that point, chatter about a regime change will begin. But their failures against Western could also mean nothing; could be their 2024 Notre Dame losing to Northern Illinois en route to the national championship game — a funny footnote in an otherwise successful season.

“I think Kyle’s up for that. He knows the deal. But until you’ve kind of solidified your spot, you’re more at risk than at most places.”

—  Steve Young, former BYU and NFL quarterback

“It’s Week 1 of college football. It’s probably when you’re going to make your most mistakes, and your biggest jump is from Week 1 to Week 2,” linebacker Troy Bowles explains. “We didn’t want it to happen, but we definitely needed that. So I feel like we’re going to come out next week really strong.”

Whittingham himself isn’t so sure. “We have a ton of work to do. The degree of difficulty next week goes way up, and if we don’t play a lot better, it’s not going to be pretty,” he says he told his team in the locker room. “The good thing is, they all agreed. There was not one guy in the room that was thinking anything different.”

Kyle Whittingham came to Ann Arbor to finish something. Because, even at 66, his hunger hadn’t died. But now, it feels like he’s teetering before the real mission even begins. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Luckily — if there is such a thing, under the circumstances — his experience gives him a chance.

“The greatness of Kyle Whittingham is he’s never changed. He’s the same guy that he was when he started coaching,” Chow says. “He never let it get to his head.”

But Michigan, it must be said again, is not Utah. Whittingham won’t have the grace of a few bad years here. “You’ve got to win,” Young says. “And I think Kyle’s up for that. He knows the deal. But until you’ve kind of solidified your spot, you’re more at risk than at most places.”

Back inside The Big House, all 110,879 fans have vanished into the night, leaving footprints illuminated by the stadium lights. The lights were first added in 2010, after more than a century of insisting on day games. Michigan doesn’t change easily. Nor does its new coach.

Kyle Whittingham in Ann Arbor is still the same guy he’s always been. He’s still Fred’s son — still tough, stubborn and committed to doing things his way. A few months ago, that manifested in his refusal to hate Ohio State. It was funny then. But after tonight, nobody’s talking about Ohio State anymore. Nor are they laughing. They’re talking instead about Western Michigan, and about Oklahoma, and about whether Whittingham will fail. The Big House has no answers tonight — just empty seats and silent lights and the lingering question of whether his way can be Michigan’s way forward.

Yes, Whittingham is the same guy he’s always been. And with the nation watching alongside these 110,000 fans next week against Oklahoma, soon everyone will learn whether that is enough.