As the clock neared zero in the waning moments of regulation, Alex Orji took the snap and darted forward through a mass of bodies. The Michigan football quarterback picked up one yard, then another and four more after that before he surged across the goal line, delivering the merciless finishing blow. This was the Wolverines’ parting shot from their 49-0 slaughter of Michigan State football last fall.

Nearly nine months later, on a cool June morning in Detroit, Orji stood inside the SAY Play Center. Right beside him was the Spartans’ new quarterback, Aidan Chiles, the highly touted transfer from Oregon State who will try to exact revenge against Orji and the reigning national champions when their teams meet again in late October.

Together, Chiles and Orji smiled while posing for photos as one kid after another took their place between them. Twelve, maybe even six months ago, this scene would have seemed unfathomable. Back then, the embers still smoldered from the heated skirmish that erupted in the Michigan Stadium tunnel in the aftermath of the Wolverines’ October 2022 victory over the Spartans. The fight, which led to the suspensions of eight Spartans players, a $100,000 fine for MSU and a reprimand for U-M, was seen as a regrettable flashpoint in a rivalry that had turned nasty. Some even wondered if the Big Ten should broker a détente by pausing the series between the two schools, who had split the last 24 contests between them.

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But that always seemed like an overreaction, and the voices of reason ultimately prevailed.

“It’s OK to be competitors and friends at the same time,” Donovan Dooley, a Detroit-based quarterback trainer, told the Free Press.

That was the message Chiles and Orji helped convey Sunday at the “I am” free youth football clinic organized by the Childs Play Foundation, a local non-profit organization designed to promote sports participation among children in underserved areas.

As morning turned to afternoon Sunday, they collaborated to support a good cause. For four hours, they hovered in the same orbit, united by a common goal.

“Nobody would have ever thought a Michigan and Michigan State quarterback would do something together,” said Dooley, who conducted the event on the field. “That’s kind of an understood ‘no’ across the state.”

Even Michigan receiver Semaj Morgan didn’t quite know what to make of it as he watched Orji, in a blue T-shirt, and Chiles, in a green one, lead the campers through drills.

Joining forces with the enemy?

Morgan, who is from West Bloomfield, didn’t really love the idea as he watched from a grassy patch nearby.

“Because I don’t like Michigan State,” he said with a slight look of disgust.

Between the lines, in the heat of battle, Orji doesn’t either.

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“On Saturday, we’re gonna try to kick their butt, we’re going to try to beat them 50-0,” said the Michigan junior, who is among the leading candidates to succeed J.J. McCarthy. “But right now, Aidan is my guy. We’re hosting a camp together. That’s clear right now. That’s just what it is. I don’t think we have any bad blood right now. We’re not breaking out in a fight or anything.”

Instead, Chiles said, “We can come together.”

There were signs even before Saturday that the animosity between the two programs had started to thaw. Regime changes in East Lansing and Ann Arbor may have contributed to that. Following Mel Tucker’s scandal-ridden dismission last fall, Jonathan Smith was hired to pick up the pieces. Freshman receiver Nick Marsh, who accompanied Chiles on Sunday, described Smith to the Free Press as “laid-back, cool, chill, relaxed.” As an outsider from the West Coast, Smith has maintained a detached perspective on the rivalry. That became clear in May, when a reporter asked about two players, Jaden Mangham and Semaj Bridgeman, who had recently switched sides. Mangham, a junior safety from Beverly Hills, ditched MSU for Michigan. Then, later that same day, Bridgeman, a former four-star recruit from Philadelphia, revealed he was transferring to Michigan State after one season with the Wolverines. In a different time, those moves would have been sacrilegious, maybe even verboten.

But, Smith said, “That’s the landscape in this day and age across the country.”

When a reporter pressed him on the subject, he responded by saying he wasn’t trying to “downplay” the significance of it as it pertained to MSU’s feud with Michigan. But he didn’t seem too worked up about it either.

Moments before he made those comments to the media at the National College Showcase at Wayne State, Smith walked out of a speaking session in lockstep with Michigan coach Sherrone Moore. The two appeared convivial before going their separate ways. In January, Moore succeeded Jim Harbaugh, who bolted for the Los Angeles Chargers after periodically inflaming the rivalry over his nine-year tenure. Following a 2018 pregame scuffle, Harbaugh called MSU “bush league.” After the tunnel incident two years ago, he stoked the fires some more when he said an “apology will not get the job done in this instance” and suggested “there should be serious consequences for the many individuals culpable.”

Harbaugh and Mark Dantonio, during his 13 seasons in East Lansing, used their bully pulpits to intensify the bitterness of the Michigan-MSU series. Smith and Moore now have the power to cool it. If they choose to do so, Orji and Chiles gave them a nice assist Sunday.

“Anytime you see guys from Michigan and Michigan State, in the same position, shake hands and do something together, that’s a message within itself,” Dooley said. “It’s like, whoa, that’s new. That’s foreign. And there is no subliminal message to it. It’s loud and clear.”

More than eight months after he dealt the ruthless mortal strike to MSU in that blowout, Orji was happy to join Chiles in delivering it.

“I think this a great opportunity, a great way to show we’re all on the same team here,” the Michigan quarterback said. “At the end of the day, he’s going to be a Spartan for life and I’m going to be a Wolverine for life. But we’re still going to be brothers for life.”

Who’s big and who’s little will be sorted out at another time. For now, they come together in peace.

Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Two new QBs show MSU-Michigan football rivalry reset is possible