EMU’s Noah Kim embracing ‘unc status,’ thinking ‘every day’ about Spartan Stadium return in 7th season

Ypsilanti — At this point, Noah Kim welcomes the jokes. 

“At the end of the day there's some truth in it,” Kim said. “Like, you are old. And that's just kind of what it is. I don't think it'll ever annoy me because I pretty much have it coming. It's your seventh year of college, you deserve to get joked on a little bit. No hard feelings at all and, I mean, you've gotta embrace it.” 

Sitting on a large leather sofa in the Incarnati Athletic Center on a cold afternoon in late January, Kim is here by virtue of an approved NCAA eligibility waiver that granted him a seventh year of college football, basically providing a retroactive medical redshirt from his time at Michigan State. He also benefits from his 2020 season not counting towards his eligibility clock, due to the Covid pandemic. He’s part of a growing number of college football players who have extended their careers beyond the usual five years, a result of Covid and, more recently, challenges to the NCAA’s eligibility rules (though Kim’s case doesn’t really fall in that bucket.)

And it all means Kim, who turned 24 in December, is set to return as the quarterback for Eastern Michigan in 2026, the first time in his college career he’ll get to be a starting quarterback in back-to-back seasons. It’s the first time EMU has returned a starting quarterback since 2017. And entering what will now be his final year of college football, Kim has no shortage of opportunity: To improve on being the MAC’s leading passer in 2025, to play at Spartan Stadium one last time, something Kim said he's thought about regularly, and to lead the Eagles back to a bowl game for the first time since 2023. 

“I was excited just because you go from thinking it's your last year to, 'Oh, you get another year,'” Kim said. “And then for me, personally, being able to start at a school, be a starting quarterback and return to the same school was something that I haven't done in my career. Like the last time I started I transferred the year after.”

Through most of the 2025 season, the staff at Eastern Michigan, and Kim himself, assumed it was his final year of college football. He’d gotten the free year in 2020, redshirted 2021 and played four games for MSU in 2022, started five games for the Spartans in 2023 and then got hurt. He transferred to Coastal Carolina and played sparingly there in 2024. 

At EMU last season, Kim seized the starting role and largely thrived, leading the MAC in passing with more than 2800 yards. But it appeared to be a swan song. 

“We knew that we were going to have to find a quarterback,” head coach Chris Creighton said. “And we did not have one in our back pocket. It was going to be like, who pops up and all of that. 

But Tae Kim, the quarterback’s father, put the bug in his ear about a potential waiver for another year. 

“His support, when he got it back, he was just super happy that I get another chance to be here and be happy where I'm at and give me a better chance at doing something better this year,” Kim said of his dad. 

Kim pondered the idea for a spell, and eventually took the idea to EMU football general manager Jeff Collett in early December. 

Collett felt they had a good shot at it, Kim said, and the wheels started turning. 

“I go into Jeff's office and before they spoke I said, 'This is not April 1st,'” Creighton recalled. “There's a lot of people that have payback to me about April 1st stuff, right? And that's just not fair, if it's not April 1st. So I said, 'This is not April 1st.' And they said, 'Noah came in and says he really thinks he's got an extra year.' And I was like, 'Your what hurts?' And they said 'Yeah,' and kind of went through it and it was — there's waivers where you're asking for a favor, like, 'He just played in 10 more plays than he was supposed to.' And then there's waivers where, you know, '20 didn't count, you get a medical, you get a regular redshirt and you play for three, you've got one left.” 

While the EMU staff and Kim felt good about getting the waiver, meeting the requirements and sending along the proper injury documentation, it was still a sense of relief when news came through from the NCAA in early January: Kim got a seventh year. 

“How we hadn’t figured that out,” Creighton said of Kim having, effectively, a stashed year of eligibility, “I guess we didn't go back to 1943 when he was a freshman and count all the years.”

Kim’s return to EMU has come with plenty of ribbing from teammates, and even his head coach. 

He’s expectedly been called “unc” — a slang shortening of “uncle” that’s morphed into a catchall for older male figures, relation not required — or told he’s reached “unc status” by his younger teammates. 

The fun has even gone beyond teammates, as Creighton has a fun idea for Kim and fellow 24-year-old Braydon Bennett, a transfer running back from Virginia Tech, who played at Coastal Carolina with Kim. 

“It seems like the common nickname is 'unc,'” Kim said. “I got unc status for sure. I pretty much had unc status this last year. Now it's for sure, ingrained unc. And coach Creighton had made a joke the other day: He said anyone that's 24 years or older on the team should have Mr. before their last name on their jerseys, just to signify how old you are.”

And looking ahead to his now-final season, Kim already has one game circled on the calendar. 

Sept. 12, 2026: Eastern Michigan at Michigan State in Spartan Stadium. 

“I'm not joking when I say this: I've thought about it probably every day,” Kim said. “One, it's — I get another chance to play in the stadium. But two it's like, what an opportunity. You don't see this very often. There's a lot of — a lot of thought goes into it, for sure,” Kim said. “I'm super excited and to play against Michigan State is just a whole 'nother level. Played for Michigan State. Graduated from there. I still support Michigan State athletics, I watch their basketball games and stuff like that. But now I get to play against them and that's a completely different mindset. I actually think about it every day. Looking forward to it.”

Kim is one of the last players who signed with Mark Dantonio — who retired a few months later — at MSU to still be playing college football. He spent three seasons in East Lansing and earned his undergraduate degree from MSU prior to transferring after the 2023 season. 

And Kim is still connected to MSU. He still has friends on the team from his time there. He’d recently spent some time on the weekend hanging out with MSU linebacker and fellow Virginia native Jordan Hall. They were teammates at MSU in 2023. Kim is also close to new MSU linebacker Caleb Wheatland, his “best friend since kindergarten,” who transferred from Auburn.

“I played against him at Maryland when I was at State,” Kim said. “And then to play against him again when he’s at Michigan State now, it’s crazy. Super exciting.”  

Kim isn’t coursing with animus towards Michigan State, it’s clear. But it’s evident, too, that he’d like to make a statement when he returns to Spartan Stadium. 

As he considers what it means to get one final game at Spartan Stadium, Kim pauses before offering his thoughts. 

“You dream of opportunities like this,” Kim said. “It's super — I don't even know how to describe it.” 

He’s also not alone in being a former Spartan returning to East Lansing for a road game, as he leads off for three that will do it in 2025: Kim, Northwestern’s Aidan Chiles and Illinois’ Katin Houser. Houser and Kim were also teammates briefly at MSU, but haven’t spoken directly about their respective returns to the banks of the Red Cedar. 

And if nothing else, Kim is keenly aware that the game at MSU is one of just 12 more games he’s guaranteed to have a shot at. 

With the perspective of the last half decade (plus a year) of college football, Kim might have extra motivation for one game, but is generally hellbent on making it all count. 

Returning for another year as the starter and established presence in the locker room should give him a leg up, and puts him in a position to lead even more in a pivotal offseason for EMU. 

“A second year in the offense, it's a big deal because you have this whole time to work on what you've worked on this entire last year but to also — how can you get better in those areas?” Kim said. “And I mean, my biggest thing as a seventh year player, this is your seventh chance in college, you're coming back to a school that you're familiar with, that you started at and you're a captain at: How can you improve where you were at the end of this last season to where we going to, leading up into the fall? I think that's going to be the biggest thing. Just raise the level of competitiveness, the level of knowledge, like every category in football. How can we be this much better this time around?”