A quarterback who knows the building
Noah Kim left East Lansing three years ago. Saturday he comes back through the visitors’ tunnel.
The Eastern Michigan quarterback spent four seasons at Michigan State and opened the 2023 campaign as the Spartans’ starter before the job got away from him. Coastal Carolina came next. Eastern Michigan followed in 2025. Kim is now in his seventh year of college eligibility, which in the transfer era amounts to a career inside a career.
He is not pretending the fixture is neutral. “I’d be lying if I said, ‘Oh, it’s just some random football game,’” Kim told MLive.com, before adding that the emotion has to be parked once the ball is kicked.
Michigan State coach Pat Fitzgerald sees the other side of all those snaps. A quarterback with that much mileage has read every coverage college football can throw at him, and Fitzgerald pointed to Kim’s knack for extending plays and making defenses pay when they get sloppy in their run fits.
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Two teams arriving from opposite directions
Kim has completed 51 of 81 passes this season for 453 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. A 62.9 percent completion rate, tidy rather than spectacular, and enough to keep his team in games.
The Eagles are 1-1 after a 27-21 home loss to San Jose State last week. Michigan State is 1-0, having beaten Toledo 30-20 in its opener, though that scoreline hides how one-sided the afternoon actually was on the stat sheet.
The Spartans piled up 26 first downs to Toledo’s 10 and 397 total yards to 273. They also conceded a 60-yard touchdown pass and a 71-yard touchdown run, and turned five separate drives into Liam Boyd field goals rather than touchdowns. Comfortable on paper, unfinished everywhere else.
A series with one direction of travel
Eastern Michigan has played Michigan State ten times and lost ten times. The last meeting, back in 2014, ended 73-14. That is the weight Kim carries into Spartan Stadium on top of everything personal.
Michigan State opens as a heavy favorite for obvious reasons. What the Spartans do not have is a quarterback on the opposite sideline who spent four years learning the place from the inside.
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