Kirk Herbstreit: We'll Learn Who Michigan, Michigan State 'Truly Are'
ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit will be in East Lansing for College GameDay, live just outside Spartan Stadium, which will play host to No. 6 Michigan's game at No. 8 Michigan State. While he'll call Ohio State vs. Penn State later that night, the biggest game of the weekend across college football features the Wolverines and Spartans.
Both teams are undefeated at 7-0 but have played the 73rd and 71st toughest schedules in America to this point, according to ESPN.com, with neither having taken on an opponent that is currently ranked in the top 25.
Observes, Herbstreit included, are excited to figure out exactly how good each team is.
"This is the weekend we really learn who these teams truly are," Hebstreit said on a conference call with reporters. "Is Michigan State, which to me [head coach] Mel Tucker's got to be the Big Ten, if not National Coach of the Year, are they a legitimate threat to win the Big Ten east? This is the weekend we learn that.
"And [U-M head man] Jim Harbaugh. Here's a guy that, his own fans had him on the hot seat — his own fans questioning whether or not his teams were ever going to get over the hump. And here they are undefeated, playing as efficient as anybody in the conference.
"Now, they get their chance to go on the road against a top-10 team to kind of show, you know, we are that good."
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After last season's disastrous 2-4 season that was riddled with opt-outs and injuries, Herbstreit has seen Harbaugh and Co. get back to their winning ways, ripping off seven-straight triumphs, including in hostile environments at Wisconsin and at Nebraska, and having fun while doing so.
"Look at the offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency," Herbstreit said, discussing the Maize and Blue. "They're taking care of the ball. They’re creating turnovers. They're doing all the little things that add up to big things to win football games, and this is a team that made wholesale changes to their coaching staff after last year.
"Jim Harbaugh, the athletic director backed him up and said, 'This is still my guy. I still believe in him,' and there were a lot of Michigan fans that were like, 'What? We can't beat Ohio State. What are you doing?' A lot of people were frustrated, and to his credit, he kind of blocked that out.
"Now they’re having a lot of fun. Watch Michigan play. Look at their enthusiasm and the confidence that they're playing with. It's like, if you turn on the 2020 film — again, it's a COVID year, everybody was dealing with it — but if you turn on that film and watch 2020, just the body language and energy versus watching them play in 2021. I don't know if there's another team that — from an enthusiasm and confidence and just swagger, I don't know if anybody's changed more than Michigan from 2020 to 2021.
"So, they come into this rivalry game on the road. You saw what they did when they went to Camp Randall. When the fourth quarter started, that's supposed to be an intimidating thing when Camp Randall starts bouncing up and down with ‘Jump Around’ and there were players from Michigan — to me, kind of out of character for a Jim Harbaugh team — they're just having fun, swinging towels, jumping up and down with students from Wisconsin, kind of like, 'We're not afraid of this. We're having fun with this kind of mentality.'
"I think they’ll walk into East Lansing with all the booing and all the stuff they're going to be hearing, and they're just going to kind of wave their hands like, 'Oh, we love this. This is what we want, we want to be here.” That's my impression of Michigan and the mindset, the mentality, of how they'll come into that game."
On the flip side of the coin, Hebrstreit praised Michigan State as "the biggest surprise of the year" to this point.
"To think about where they were in Mel Tucker’s first year," Herbstreit began. Keep in mind, like a lot of other first-year coaches in 2020 — it’s a global pandemic, heavy restrictions, no spring football, cancel the season, oh no, now we're going to have a season, and it’s just unprecedented what he went through his first year. They looked like, obviously, a severe work in progress.
"I don't know if anybody took advantage of the transfer portal as much as Mel Tucker did. And you look on their roster now, most notably [junior running back] Kenneth Walker [III] from Wake Forest and it’s sprinkled all throughout their roster. They've upgraded and taken advantage of the 2021 way of doing business, and now they've got a confident football team.
"They could have lost a couple games, but to their credit, they found ways to win against Nebraska, they won against Indiana. Those games could have gone the other way. But when you find ways to win games, your team starts to believe in your culture, starts to believe in your way of doing things, and I think that's where Michigan State is right now. I think they’ve become a really confident, dangerous team, and they're always tough in East Lansing."
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