In raising a standard, Central Michigan doesn’t need to look farther than its chief rival
The Chippewas have MAC title expectations and a reigning MAC champion as their biggest rival, making it easy to set Western Michigan as a benchmark.
Mt. Pleasant — Western Michigan, those are dirty words in mid-Michigan. They’re also the benchmark.
Head coach Matt Drinkall brought up the Western Michigan's football team during his remarks at Central Michigan’s media day earlier this month. And what did the head coach of the Chippewas say about his program’s most bitter rival? It certainly wasn’t fighting words.
“You know, I think one of the coolest opportunities for Central Michigan right now has been Western Michigan's success in football,” Drinkall said. “I told Coach [Lance] Taylor that at media day. Like, I'm glad they won the conference last year. Like, that's — what a great bar for us. Because who benefits more from having to raise their level of everything than Central Michigan if Western Michigan does well?”
Jarring as it might be to hear a head coach paying a high compliment to his chief rival, Drinkall’s assessment of the situation is simple: Central Michigan wants to be MAC champions and beat WMU, it’s biggest rival. WMU is the reigning champion, so all the things that CMU is striving for are, at the moment, tied up in a neat little bow in Kalamazoo. And after finally being forged in the fires of the rivalry in 2025, Drinkall is hopeful to retake the upperhand for CMU come Oct. 17 at Kelly/Shorts Stadium.
“I don't know that any time a coach takes over, unless you played here, I don't know that a new head coach will ever be totally, fully prepared for what that rivalry truly means,” Drinkall said. “So now I'm much more equipped to bring in outside sources and good points of contact here to help make sure that the flames of that rivalry are stoked as big as we can and get the Victory Cannon back here.”
Central Michigan has been to one MAC championship game in football since 2009, when the Chippewas were in the midst of winning three MAC titles in four seasons. Despite having a far richer history of winning titles in the MAC, it’s been CMU watching its chief rival, Western Michigan, win two titles (2016, 2025) to bookend a decade, just the third and fourth conference titles in history for WMU.
And Drinkall himself arrived to the rivalry needing to renovate the Central Michigan program he took over, right as Taylor and Co. found fifth gear and powered to a 10-win season, a MAC title and a bowl win — in a season that included a close-fought win in Waldo Stadium over Central Michigan.
That brought the Victory Cannon trophy back to Kalamazoo, and Drinkall learned a lesson in the process.
“To be totally honest with you, I kind of came in a little bit, not really — not fully prepared,” he said.
Drinkall knew, intellectually, the depth and intensity of the rivalry matched that of the most high-profile rivalries in the sport. He’d coached in the Army-Navy game, but noted that the background of understanding and respect — we’re all going into military service after this — that underpins that game is absent when the Victory Cannon is on the line.
His daughter was also born days prior to that game, so Drinkall travelled on his own to Waldo Stadium from the hospital in Midland, arriving about an hour before kickoff. With a police escort, he was slightly shielded as he drove in.
But once he had to walk from CMU’s locker room across the concourse and onto the turf at Waldo Stadium, then he knew.
“Then you realize, like, holy lord,” Drinkall said. “This is the real deal and it is awesome.”
Catch up on Mitten Football's CMU, WMU reporting
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And though Central Michigan has the Broncos firmly in the crosshairs, it’s not a stagnant target that the Chippewas will be aiming for.
“My perspective on that is that Central is a really good team,” WMU safety Micah Davis said. “I think that helps us, and I think just, like, yeah, we are the MAC champs, we have a target on our back. And that's the way we come to practice every day. Like, we know we are the standard right now, but that doesn't mean our standard can change because we're supposed to win the MAC.”
Because while Western Michigan won the MAC on the heels of winning 10 of its final 11 games in 2025, the Broncos aren’t resting on any laurels. For one, that group would probably like to avoid another 0-3 start and are surely gunning to repeat as MAC champions. The Broncos got picked first in the preseason poll.
But moreover, as has been Taylor’s theme for WMU, they wish to continue to “elevate,” which this year means shoehorning themselves into the College Football Playoff discussion.
So while Central Michigan is trying to close the distance between itself and its rival atop the conference, the Broncos are seeking to keep running ahead of the pack, building a gap over the likes of Miami (OH), Toledo, Ohio and, for certain, Central Michigan.
“Those games against Central are always super fun,” WMU safety Joey Pope said. “And they're always competitive no matter what team's good, if a team's good that year, if a team's bad that year. But, you know, right now it's fall camp. So we're far away from that game, kind of just worrying about where we're at, not really looking too far ahead on the schedule. We got a lot of games before that.”
And as happens every year, we’ll get a definitive answer on who has pulled ahead when both of these teams meet on Oct. 17 at Kelly/Shorts Stadium on a Saturday afternoon to, once again, battle for the Victory Cannon.
“I get the most text messages and phone calls from alumni and donors, I think, about that by far,” Drinkall said of the WMU game being on a home Saturday. “And everybody wants to come to that game. And everybody just knows how awesome that is.”
