Michigan fans want Kyle Whittingham to hate Ohio State. He'd rather just beat the Buckeyes.

Kyle Whittingham’s first season at Michigan is beginning under a cloud of scandal that is shocking the state. 

No, he’s not hacking into female students’ photo libraries or illegally scouting opposing teams or sleeping with his administrative assistant. Those are garden-variety scandals in the Michigan program over the last few years. 

In the eyes of some Michigan fans, Whittingham is committing a far more serious offense: He doesn’t hate Ohio State enough.

“Would we have a better chance to win if I hated them?” Whittingham said. “I don’t understand. Whatever gives us the best chance to win, I’m all for. Want to beat them worse than anybody around so I don’t know how that got to be such a hot topic.”

Whittingham’s comment Monday, in response to a topic that came out of Big Ten media days a couple weeks ago, is like touching the third rail of college coaching. To admit that you don’t have as much visceral hate for your rival as the fan base?

Bravo to Whittingham for eschewing the performative nonsense many coaches engage in and approaching his job like a fully grown adult. 

And, brother, best of luck to him. 

Because if there is one thing Michigan fans won’t tolerate, it’s the idea that their new head football coach doesn’t have Ryan Day lodged in his brain from the time he takes his morning shower to the time he lays his head on the pillow. Hell, even that’s not enough. If you’re not thinking about the Saturday after Thanksgiving in your sleep, what are you even doing in Ann Arbor?

“I’m not trying to downplay that at all,” Whittingham said “It’s a huge game. Gigantic. And it’s something that we all have in the back of our mind 24-7. I probably should have worded it differently but that game is of utmost importance. Just don’t confuse that with a lack of desire to win the game.”

Is that enough, Michigan fans? 

Ha. Of course it isn’t. Because Whittingham cannot unring this particular bell. For the rest of his time at Michigan, however long it lasts, any loss to Ohio State will not be perceived as the product of a talent disparity or because some 20-year-olds executed a couple plays slightly better.

It’ll be because Whittingham didn’t hate hard enough. 

Good luck, Kyle. 

The brouhaha over what Whittingham initially said about the Ohio State rivalry is both ridiculous and perfectly understandable.  

“Based on what Urban has told me about it, I just think a rivalry can be intense and emotional without the hatred factor,” Whittingham said. “I don’t think there’s any place for that personally.”

Urban, of course, is Urban Meyer — which is instructive here. Michigan fans can cite whichever of Meyer’s own scandals they want to justify why they hate him, but they mostly hate him because he’s a Buckeye who went 7-0 against the Wolverines. 

That makes them different from Whittingham, who was Meyer’s defensive coordinator at Utah and his successor as head coach when Meyer went to Florida.

Who do you think Whittingham has more in common with: Meyer, Day and the rest of the Ohio State coaching staff, or the angry guy sitting in the 40th row of Michigan Stadium who refuses to type the letter ‘O’ for one week a year?

This isn’t meant as a criticism of that guy. We love that guy in college football. We need that guy in college football.

But please understand: Most coaches are not that guy. 

Sure, there are a few true psychos out there who care about beating their rival the same way the fans do. And we may have recently seen the peak of that era in this rivalry when the programs were being run by an alum (Jim Harbaugh) and Ohio native (Meyer) who did not like each other very much. 

For the most part, though, coaches would prefer to downplay the intensity of these rivalries because they do not experience them the same way as fans. 

It doesn’t mean they want to win any less — it’s their jobs on the line, after all — but there’s a shared empathy over how strange and fickle this business can be. 

The guy you just beat? He might be working for you in a few years. And that school you’re supposed to hate? It might be signing your paycheck in the near future.

Imagine telling someone in 2014 when Gary Patterson was at the peak of his TCU powers that within a decade he’d be wearing both a Baylor and Texas logo within a decade. 

That’s how unpredictable this business can be. 

If there’s hate — and there’s plenty of it in the coaching profession — it’s more often based in personal beef or over some nonsense that happened in a recruiting battle rather than deep feelings about an institution. 

And if Michigan fans expected something different from Whittingham, they should have done more research on their new coach.

This is a guy who spent most of his life inside a rivalry called the “Holy War,” having played at BYU and coached at Utah for 32 years.

Whittingham had the same attitude about that rivalry for decades, often frustrating both fan bases. He’s simply not going to indulge the idea he should hate a particular opponent. 

For a segment of Michigan fans, that will disqualify Whittingham as a “bad fit” or someone who “doesn’t get it.” But don’t confuse his lack of immersion in the all-consuming intensity of this rivalry with a lack of desire to win. 

This is a 66-year-old who hasn’t missed a workout in decades, whose teams play with a relentless physical edge and had enough gas in the tank to move halfway across the country for a new challenge rather than taking his millions and heading to the beach.

Whittingham has been around the block a few times. He knows what these rivalries are about and understands how to get a team fired up to play a big game. 

He also knows that coaching at Michigan, above all else, is a job. And he doesn’t need to hate a particular opponent, even Ohio State, to do it well.