The friendships folded in to Noah Kim's return to face Michigan State
The Eastern Michigan quarterback has a few friends on the MSU football roster, including one of his closest friends from childhood, who he'll face in college for the second time.
Ypsilanti — It’s Jan. 17, 2026, and snow is covering the grey turf at Rynearson Stadium as Noah Kim settles into a black leather couch in the Incarnati Athletic Center, overlooking the winterscape.
Freshly granted an NCAA waiver for the 2026 season, Kim spoke about his excitement for another year of college football and the benefits of being a veteran returning quarterback and what it could mean for Eastern Michigan’s offense. But even then, Kim already knew that one game just meant something different to him: Sept. 12, Eastern Michigan at Michigan State.
“I'm not joking when I say this: I've thought about it probably every day,” Kim said then.
Kim returns to play his former team Saturday, carrying no animosity but an immense desire to lead his Eastern Michigan squad to an upset over Michigan State. But folded into Kim’s return to Spartan Stadium is a story of several friends reuniting on the football field. One, Caleb Wheatland, goes all the way back to Kim’s days in early elementary school, and another, Jordan Hall, is a former MSU teammate of Kim’s as the two have grown closer in recent years since the latter’s return to the state.
It’s a light, circumspect note to a game for all involved, but all the good feelings will melt away into a competitive showdown when the game starts. They’ll start being friends again once they’re done competing.
“I'd be lying if I said, like, ‘No, it's just — it's just some random football game,’” Kim said on Monday. “But I mean, at the same time, though, you kind of have to be able to control your emotions and how you feel about certain situations, what you're going into.”
That Kim is even eligible to play this season, his seventh of college football, a season in which he’s set to turn 25 on Dec. 3, required a bit of NCAA maneuvering, with EMU sending in a waiver application for the quarterback over the winter.
It quickly came back with good news, and EMU entered the 2026 campaign with Kim at the helm, and a trip to Michigan State quickly came into focus as a meaningful date for the signal caller.
“Played for Michigan State. Graduated from there. I still support Michigan State athletics, I watch their basketball games and stuff like that,” Kim said in January. “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 also knew he’d get a chance to face off with a friend from his early days in grade school, linebacker Caleb Wheatland, who transferred to Michigan State this offseason after spending a year at Auburn.
Wheatland started his college career at Maryland, where he already faced Kim once, when the quarterback was at Michigan State in 2023.
“Our relationship just kept on growing and growing, and even when he went to college, and I was still in high school, like, we still kept in touch,” Wheatland said. “You know, still checking on each other. We always play games with each other.”
Kim, who is a year older, and Wheatland really became friends during an afterschool program they both took part in as kids. That friendship endured through grade school, middle school and into high school when they finally became teammates at Westfield High School.
Andrew Graham
Andrew Graham
And while they spent plenty of time together on and around football, some of Wheatland’s favorite memories from their youth is spending time at Kim’s home with his family.
More specifically, the meals that Kim’s dad, Tae, cooked help keep friends coming around. Wheatland joked he had to stick to the one plate rule when he was over there.
The offerings? Once it was birria ramen, another time brisket, then Buffalo chicken wings. Wheatland also shouted out some sandwiches that Tae made.
“Mr. Kim is one hell of a cook,” Wheatland said. “And to be able to go over there and, you know, enjoy a meal with them, I mean, sometimes I'm limited to one plate rule with them. So it's kind of tough going over there, but you know, I really enjoy it, the outside time of football that we have together.”
On the football field, Kim’s recruitment picked up more than Wheatland’s, as the quarterback originally committed to nearby Virginia Tech before flipping to Michigan State late in the cycle.
Wheatland, a year younger, wasn’t getting as much attention for a college career, recalled Kim taking him on a visit to VT while the quarterback was committed there. As much as it was a friend offering a cool experience, there’s also something to the fact Kim helped get Wheatland in front of more college coaches.
The duo had long said they planned to play football at the highest possible levels, and they’ve managed to live that out. What wasn’t clear was that they’d be on the same field, or that it could even happen twice.
“That was always our goal from elementary school,” Wheatland said. “Like, we knew we wanted to play at the highest level.”
Eventually Kim went off to Michigan State for the 2021 season and Wheatland played his final year before eventually signing with Maryland in December of 2021.
By Sept. 23, 2023, they were facing off in Spartan Stadium, a day that went much better for Wheatland and the Terrapins than it did for Kim and the Spartans. In a 31-9 win for the visitors, MSU turned it over five times and Wheatland finished with 1.5 sacks, including one on Kim in the first quarter.
The duo were relatively mum on their first matchup. They do appreciate, though, how lucky they are to have another, and how unlikely it is that the roles are reversed, with Kim traveling to try and unseat Wheatland and the Spartans this time.
“Super full circle,” Kim said, noting he expects good football on Saturday.
And with Wheatland moving so close to Kim this year — it’s about an hour drive from Ypsilanti to EL, or vice versa — the friends of 20-odd years got to spend a good bit of quality time together in the summer. They even took a golf trip to Charlevoix and played at Belvedere Golf Club, joined by Sam Edwards, a former MSU linebacker who Kim once roomed with in East Lansing.
While Kim might be the more accomplished golfer of the group, the time spent together over the summer in Northern Michigan was a welcome chance to be together and catch up. And Wheatland has plans on improving his golf game.
“He's a way better golfer than I am,” Wheatland said. “But I’m getting there, though. Maybe next summer. Maybe next summer, I'll be able to beat him.”
Hall also hails from a similar part of Virginia, but younger and having played at IMG Academy in Florida in high school, the linebacker first got to know Kim a little during his freshman season, when Kim was a redshirt sophomore in 2023.
Their early connection was mostly that of friendly teammates, coming mostly via Edwards, who was in the linebacker room with Hall. They had some common ground over both being from Virginia, but, Hall said, the relationship picked up more when Kim returned to the Mitten ahead of the 2025 season.
Since then, they’ve seen each other on a semi-regular basis. It’s far from constant, but they’ve golfed themselves, and Kim’s fiance and Hall’s girlfriend are also close.
They’ve also organized some dog playdates with Kim’s dog, a doodle breed named Prince, and Hall’s 10-month-old golden retriever named Cojo.
“We left him alone at the house one time this summer, and they held it down. So yeah, not too bad,” Hall said of their respective canines companions.
The duo will also sometimes hop on co-operative video games together, usually opting for a first person shooter of some variety, though they haven’t recently as camp and the season have picked up.
“We haven't played the game in a while with this season going on, so I haven't had the chance to talk smack to him,” Hall said with a chuckle.
Now that game week is here, the Saturday that Kim has thought about perhaps more than any other since he got his waiver back comes into focus. He’ll get to see a few of his friends after the game, and it’s likely that the Kim and Wheatland families get together to tailgate or after the game.
There’s been some friendly banter between Kim and Wheatland, too, though they do their best to keep it tamped down.
“We get fired up about it,” Kim said. “We try not to because it'll get intense a little bit.”
Everyone involved knows that come Saturday afternoon at 3:30 p.m., they’re going to be fierce competitors for the next three or four hours. Kim has every motivation imaginable to win, and the Spartans surely are gunning to not be upset by a visiting MAC foe.
It’s an unlikely story, this on-field reunion, requiring transfers, a pandemic, in Kim’s case, an NCAA waiver to bring this matchup to bear, with plenty of golf played, dog meet ups and weddings attended over the summer to pass the time.
And the friendships that will endure between Kim and Hall and Wheatland, they get shelved for about three hours on Saturday afternoon.
“To be honest, like, we're both competitors at the end of the day,” Wheatland said. “It's not the fact of, like — I feel like we would both be doing each other a disservice if we weren't going to the game giving 100 percent.”
