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Jim Harbaugh's fast start at Michigan reinvigorates rivalry with Michigan State

It was 2007, Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio's first game against Michigan, a 28-24 comeback victory for the Wolverines that will forever be remembered because afterward running back Mike Hart called the Spartans "little brother."

Michigan State is an extraordinary university in almost every imaginable way. It just happens to sit 65 miles from another such school, one with a bigger national and global reputation and, historically, better football program. That's just reality. Having great universities isn't a zero-sum game. Football is. Michigan usually wins.

So "little brother" hurt, which Dantonio not just realized but seized upon. He's never downplayed how important beating Michigan is, was or will be for his program. He's been uniquely adept at seizing the State mindset, equal parts pride and defensiveness.

"This game has a way of defining you," the coach said in 2009, after beating Michigan for the second straight time in a streak that is now six of seven heading into a cauldro

That's no longer Brady Hoke (L) on the Michigan sideline opposite of MSU's Mark Dantonio. (Getty)
That's no longer Brady Hoke (L) on the Michigan sideline opposite of MSU's Mark Dantonio. (Getty)

n of emotion Saturday in Ann Arbor.

How the game has defined Michigan State is that it is tough and smart and resourceful and, at its core, so self-determined that it can win with supposedly lesser, or at least less-hyped, athletes. Spartans Will, the slogan goes. That Michigan State is now a national contender, 6-0 and ranked seventh in the polls, couldn't have occurred without taking down the Wolverines first.

Michigan always loomed though. Great programs don't stay down forever.

Perhaps most annoying was the Wolverines' tendency to gleefully brush aside State's focus on them by instead focusing on Ohio State or even Notre Dame.

There may be nothing worse than having your archrival not consider you its archrival.

That isn't true anymore and if nothing else, that may be Dantonio's greatest accomplishment. It takes a particularly pompous Michigan fan to pretend State doesn't matter, that Saturday isn't huge, that Wolverines supporters covet the chance to shut up all those Spartans who have had so much reason to boast of late.

This one matters as much in Ann Arbor as East Lansing. Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes can wait.

It's why Michigan put so much into luring Jim Harbaugh out of the NFL and back to his hometown and alma mater, almost overnight restoring the program and turning this into one of the most intriguing intrastate rivalries in the country.

It wasn't just waving money at Harbaugh – he could have made more in the NFL. It was everything else: the old letterman leaning on him, the unapologetic wooing from the administration, the over-the-top efforts to convince him to come home.

"Harbaugh's answer in 2011 [when he brushed off interest in the job] was he wasn't feeling the love," said John U. Bacon, the author of the new New York Times best-seller "Endzone: The Rise, Fall and Return of Michigan Football", which richly details the end of the Brady Hoke/Dave Brandon era and the hiring of Harbaugh. "So they made sure he felt the love."

Every chip was played. Last year, as Harbaugh coached the San Francisco 49ers, he fielded calls and correspondence from everyone, including lengthy discussions from active NFL stars and former Michigan players such as Charles Woodson and Tom Brady imploring him to go back and make things right.

"If you're going to ask a guy to make a somewhat irrational decision [leave the NFL] you have to hit his heart strings," Bacon said.

The all-out courtship has already bore fruit, Harbaugh leading Michigan to a 5-1 record, a No. 12 ranking and the unleashing of a brunt force trauma defense that has produced three consecutive shutouts. Harbaugh was always a quick turnaround master – winning immediately at the University of San Diego and the 49ers.

This has been even quicker.

"There was only one coach who could immediately bring together the Michigan family which had been shattered since the Appalachian State game [a humbling loss in 2007 that effectively ended the Lloyd Carr years]," Bacon said.

So now State has its perfect coach and Michigan has its perfect coach and what hangs in the balance is not just one, but two dream seasons, impossible bragging rights and a potential shift in everything.

The truth is, a Michigan victory doesn't mean Michigan State will crumble. Dantonio's program is too strong for that. And a Michigan State victory wouldn't be a sign that Harbaugh won't be able to reverse the trend lines here. Obviously the man is going to be successful.

So this is just one game. It just feels bigger than that.

Jim Harbaugh's Wolverines have won five straight since an opening loss to Michigan. (Getty)
Jim Harbaugh's Wolverines have won five straight since an opening loss to Michigan. (Getty)

Part of it is that this was supposed to be State's season, its chance at a national title. Yet the offseason was annoyingly – for the Spartans – dominated by Harbaugh coverage locally and nationally. Only then the season began and Michigan's loss to Utah keeps looking more impressive while State's victory over Oregon keeps looking worse. The Spartans are unbeaten, but winning ugly. The Wolverines are hammering everyone in sight.

It's Michigan that's the seven-point favorites this weekend. Oh, brother.

Harbaugh on Monday wouldn't bite on any trash talk, declining to relive his career against State, saying both programs can be great at the same time, and complimenting the Spartans non-stop. He used the "Lion King" to say his guys needed to learn from the physical beatings of past years.

Upon his arrival he took down any signs or clocks about rivalry games, be they against the Spartans or Buckeyes. Every game is every game, he says.

"Winning the next game is the goal," Harbaugh said simply.

What he says doesn't matter though.

That he'll be on that sideline in Ann Arbor on Saturday does, giving Michigan its elite coach to take on Michigan State's elite coach in a game that promises to be so intense and extreme no fan can deny anymore.

Or would even want to.