For football programs like WMU, facing MSU has always been an uphill climb. But it used to be more of a fair fight than it is today.
For a football program like Western Michigan, facing Michigan State has always been an uphill climb. Facilities, resources, the Big Ten brand in recruiting — it’s never been an entirely fair fight.
But this much felt fair: Both programs were compensating their players similarly (with scholarships) and, if they were able to recruit and/or develop an NFL player, for the most part, they could keep them all the way through their eligibility.
That made matchups like WMU’s visit to Spartan Stadium this Friday night not just paydays for the Mid-American Conference school, but a chance to show they could punch up. It was a showcase for their top guys. And the high-end talent often wasn’t that different.
For example, from 2004 to 2024, MSU produced 10 players selected in the first two rounds of the NFL draft. WMU produced nine. That number would be reversed if you were to put Green Bay Packers 2023 second-round pick Jayden Reed — who transferred from WMU to MSU — in the Broncos’ column.
Fifteen seasons ago, the Super Bowl between the Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers featured 15 players from the MAC — and also 15 from the Big Ten. It’s hard to imagine WMU receivers Greg Jennings or Corey Davis or Broncos offensive lineman and Okemos product Taylor Moton playing their senior years at WMU today.
Or someone like return man extraordinaire and defensive back Darius Phillips — who in 2015, had two dazzling returns against the Spartans in Kalamazoo. If that happened in the transfer portal era, Phillips would be playing for MSU the next year, rather than being one of six NFL draft picks on the Broncos’ famed 2016 team that went undefeated until a narrow loss to Wisconsin in the Cotton Bowl.
From 2006 through 2022, a MAC team beat a Big Ten team every single year. That included two wins in 11 of those seasons, three wins in three of them and four wins once. The MAC is 0-18 against the Big Ten the past two seasons as the transfer portal, NIL and now revenue-sharing have grabbed hold of the sport.
Northern Illinois’ upset of Notre Dame last season should not happen in this age. That wasn’t the 2003 Huskies, who beat ranked Iowa State and Alabama teams, as well as Maryland, and then didn’t even win the MAC.
Third-year Western Michigan head coach Lance Taylor was on that Alabama team that fell to NIU. But most of his experience with mid-major football has come in this new age. He's OK with most of it. The tampering with players on opposing rosters is what really bothers him.
“With the transfer portal, NIL and revenue sharing, all the things that are so new to college football now, there is no blueprint,” Taylor said. “It just goes back to what we tell our players — you adapt and overcome, or you die.”
Taylor brings a WMU team to East Lansing that has 50-plus new players (including 31 transfers). He expects at least 15 new starters on Friday night. He’s proud, however, that his program lost only three starters to the transfer portal — “I think that's really hard to do,” he said — and that several players with opportunities elsewhere have chosen to stay. But this is still a lot of change.
“In 18 years of coaching football, it's the most new players I've ever had on one roster,” said Taylor, who was previously the offensive coordinator at Louisville and, before that, spent three years at Notre Dame, after most of a decade as an assistant in the NFL. “The real challenge, no matter how many transfers you take, no matter how many transfers you lose, no matter how many high school players you sign, it's who has the ability to connect and build relationships, to get guys to buy in and have that belief in a short period of time. That’s something I have worked extremely hard on.”
One of the players who's chosen to stay is starting safety Tate Hallock, a legacy Spartan (his dad is Ty) who began his career at MSU. His sister, Theryn, is on the MSU women’s basketball team. Tate, who led the Broncos in tackles two years ago and interceptions last season, was among the first players to commit to Taylor when he was hired at MSU in December 2022.
Junior running back Jalen Buckley, the MAC freshman of the year two years ago, has stuck around, too. Same for senior tight end Blake Bosma.
“I think that's probably one of the things that I'm most proud of,” Taylor said. “They see how close we are. I think they believe what we're doing as a program and that we're going to win. And I think that it shows there's something special at Western Michigan.”
They might win in the MAC. They won six games last season and reached a bowl. And despite the roster turnover and starting a new quarterback, largely a new offensive line, and featuring a defense with a new coordinator and plenty of new players, a lot of the rest of the conference will be in a similar boat.
The parity in the MAC that used to sometimes be frustrating has become comforting to coaches who are happy to see opponents dealing with the same challenges.
“We're all operating with the same budgets,” Taylor said. “We're all playing with the same blue-collar, Midwest, probably under-recruited kids.”
That's always been the case. But it used to be that when a few of those diamonds in the rough turned out to be blue-chippers, you got to see how they'd stack up against the Big Ten, rather than seeing them transfer to the Big Ten.
MORE:Couch: Predicting MSU's football season – WMU, BC and USC through Penn State and beyond
Contact Graham Couch at [email protected]. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU football's first opponent, WMU, faces challenges in this new age
Category: General Sports
