As the clock neared zero in the waning moments of regulation, Alex Orji took the snap and darted forward through a mass of bodies. The Michigan football quarterback picked up one yard, then another and four more after that before he surged across the goal line, delivering the merciless finishing blow. This was the Wolverines’ parting shot from their 49-0 slaughter of Michigan State football last fall.
Nearly nine months later, on a cool June morning in Detroit, Orji stood inside the SAY Play Center. Right beside him was the Spartans’ new quarterback, Aidan Chiles, the highly touted transfer from Oregon State who will try to exact revenge against Orji and the reigning national champions when their teams meet again in late October.
Together, Chiles and Orji smiled while posing for photos as one kid after another took their place between them. Twelve, maybe even six months ago, this scene would have seemed unfathomable. Back then, the embers still smoldered from the heated skirmish that erupted in the Michigan Stadium tunnel in the aftermath of the Wolverines’ October 2022 victory over the Spartans. The fight, which led to the suspensions of eight Spartans players, a $100,000 fine for MSU and a reprimand for U-M, was seen as a regrettable flashpoint in a rivalry that had turned nasty. Some even wondered if the Big Ten should broker a détente by pausing the series between the two schools, who had split the last 24 contests between them.
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But that always seemed like an overreaction, and the voices of reason ultimately prevailed.
“It’s OK to be competitors and friends at the same time,” Donovan Dooley, a Detroit-based quarterback trainer, told the Free Press.
Michigan State football quarterback Aidan Chiles (2) goes through…
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