Michigan’s 63-10 win over Northern Illinois was essentially over by halftime — early second quarter, really — just as it should have been. And right about the time some of the more nitpicky fans (aka ‘Les Miserables’) started complaining about the passing game, Michigan quarterback Cade McNamara unleashed an 87-yard touchdown bomb to sophomore receiver Cornelius Johnson as if to say, ‘shut the front door' (uh ... there was a breeze in the Big House Saturday).

That would be the last throw for the redshirt freshman (8-for-11, 191 yards, one score), with 1:53 remaining in the first half. The Wolverines were up 35-3 and would start the second stanza with freshman J.J. McCarthy at quarterback, add to their lead when Blake Corum (125 yards, three more touchdowns) broke a 51-yard touchdown score (on which the NIU safety looked like he was thinking about his postgame chicken sandwich and Snickers bar rather than trying to tackle), and cruised to an easy win.

Rocky Lombardi led one of more improbable upsets in Michigan Stadium history last year as Michigan State’s quarterback. He had no shot Saturday, harassed by the Michigan pass rushers in managing only 46 yards, and left with more bruises than completions. For good measure, and in one of those ‘lacks awareness’ moments you see from Spartans, past, current and present, he still taunted the Michigan Stadium crowd when he kept for a big ground gainer against the second-team defense with his team down 60 points.

Saturday’s display was exactly what good teams do to overmatched opponents, and like some of Jim Harbaugh’s early teams at Michigan — there’s a long way to go, but we do see some comparisons — it was business-like and encouraging.

But Harbaugh also had a message for his team in the postgame.

“Don’t fall in love with your stuff because you can get better,” he said. “It’s kind of a race to see how good you can get.

“But a lot of great things are going to happen when your players are playing as hard as they are. Good things happen. Great energy … the ball finds it, whether it’s a defensive player or an offensive player, playing as hard as you can as fast as you can, never giving up and all those things I see in our team and the way they’re playing.”

Now they take it into Big Ten play, when it really matters, Harbaugh noted, and the good news for him — this isn’t like last year, when he was trying to motivate a group that (frankly) didn’t seem like it wanted to be there. Corum, in fact, set the tone in that area start in saying, ‘we haven’t done anything yet,’ wholly unimpressed with what they’d done or even his three straight 100-yard games to begin the year.

There was a glint in his eye, for sure, but it’s clear he sees the potential in this team to be even better, to the point that Harbaugh thought he was being too hard on his squad. Asked if the ‘you’ve done nothing’ came from him, the coach insisted it didn’t.

“I haven’t said they haven’t done anything. They’ve done some stuff,” he said with a grin. “Things that are good, you want to build on.

“But the team does have big goals, and now you start playing for the Big Ten championship. Ultimately, that’s what they want to achieve, and that starts next week.”