I'm a fan of Michigan Football in particular and college football in general, but not really anything else. As I have some readers from all around the world, I should explain 'football'. American football is NOT international football or soccer, as we call it in America. It's a rough and tumble sport involving two teams of eleven players. You can score points by getting a touch down, the point after a touch down (which can be two points if you make a special play), a field goal, or a safety. These are worth six, one, two, three, and two points in order.
It's played on a one hundred yard field with two ten yard end zones at either side. While there are only eleven players playing on either offense or defense (or special teams!) at any given time, there are many more players on a given team. The NFL professional football league has fifty three players while colleges have around one hundred players.
The game is played using an oblong ball called, obviously enough, a football. As it was originally made of a pig's bladder it has the nickname of a 'pigskin', although they're now made of cowhide or a synthetic material now.
The offense has four attempts, or downs, to move the ball ten yards down the field. If they get ten or more yards, they get another set of downs. This continues until they can't get the ball further or score. Generally, if they can't get the next first down on three attempts, they'll kick it off to move the ball further away for the opponents offense. Unlike soccer, the ball is moved by carrying it or throwing it.
There are a LOT of rules for football and even more offensive and defensive schemes, but those are the basics of football. Except for a couple odd references, I'll be talking exclusively about college football and not the various professional leagues (primarily the NFL), high school football, or other youth leagues.
College football is massive. It also predates the NFL. The first college football game was played in 1869. Per television ratings, it's currently the second most popular sport in America, behind only the NFL. There are over eight hundred colleges that play football. Most of these are in divisions and leagues set up and run by the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). Division 1 is the 'top' division in college football and is divided up between the FCS and FBS subdivisions. FCS stands for Football Championship Subdivision and allows for sixty three scholarship players. FBS stands for Football Bowl Subdivision and allows for eighty five scholarship players. There are 133 FCS teams and 128 FBS teams. The FCS teams end the season with a tournament run by the NCAA, hence the 'championship' in their name while the FBS teams classically ended the season by going to various 'bowls'. The FBS champions is something I'll talk about in more detail later.
To keep this from getting far too unwieldy, I'll be focusing on the FBS.
The FBS has (had?) eleven conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), American Athletic Conference (AAC), Big 12, Big Ten (B1G), Conference USA (C-USA), Independent, Mid-American Conference (MAC), Mountain West, PAC-12, Southeastern Conference (SEC) and Sun Belt conferences These conferences, except for following the NCAA rules, manage their own affairs. They decide how many colleges are in the conference, how many conference game they'll play, how they manage their referees, how they determine their champions, and how they send their teams to particular bowls.
These conferences can be further broken down into the 'power' conferences and everybody else. Power conferences include the ACC, Big 12, B1G, PAC-12, and SEC and several independent teams. The rest of the conferences (and a few independent teams) are often referred to as the 'group of 5'.
After the regular season FBS teams, before 1998, sent teams to bowls. The Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Peach Bowl, ect. The first bowl was the 1902 Rose Bowl between Stanford and Michigan (Michigan won it 49-0). There are currently 43 bowls including the playoff games and the national championship game. Every year practically every team that doesn't have a losing record gets to play in a bowl. Before 1998 all bowls were exhibition games as the records weren't part of the conference records. Most bowls had/have conference affiliation however and the conferences like to keep track.
Before 1998 the 'national champion' was decided by polls. The associated press (a news agency) had/has a poll of its sports writers and decided a champion since the 1930s. The coaches association also votes in their own poll and crowned their own champion. There are literally dozens of other organizations but the modern history, until 1998, was dominated by the AP and Coaches Poll champions. Most years they agreed on the champion, but not always. For example in 1997 (ironically the last year of this system), Michigan was crowned the AP national champion while Nebraska was crowned the Coaches Poll champion.
These teams didn't necessarily play each other. For example, the B1G and PAC-12 (PAC-10 at the time) champions always played each other in the Rose Bowl, while Nebraska played a different team in the Orange Bowl.
1998 was the start of the Bowl Championship Series. It involved a lot of bowls and a complicated system, but it was designed to figure out the top two teams and match them up in a new championship game. There was quite a bit of controversy many years as it wasn't always clear who was the two best teams. And the methodology included using the AP poll, the Coaches Poll, and a group of computer algorithms. Several years there were teams ranked #3 that had a very good claim to being one of the best two teams. Other years there was clearly a #1 and then everybody else.
The BCS system limped along until 2014 when they started the College Football Playoff (CFP) It's ironic that they call it the college football playoff as the FCS has had a playoff since 1978. Anyway, the CFP hosted a four team playoff. This was radically different as it didn't involve any computers or polls. Instead there was/is a thirteen member committee that votes on the top twenty five teams. The top four are seeded into the four team playoff while other top teams get sent to other 'major' bowls. The CFP utilizes the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta, and Peach bowls. Each year two of them host the semifinals while the national championship is played at another stadium outside of the traditional bowl system. The highest ranked group of five team is guaranteed to be in one of the major bowls and to date, only one of them has ever been ranked in the top four and gotten into the actual playoff.
Like the BCS, there has been controversy in the playoff selections. Some years there are a clear #1 and #2. Other years there are five or even six teams with good enough records and body's of work to claim being one of the top four. So, 2023 is the last year of the four team playoff. Next year there will be a twelve team playoff.
Why is it so hard to figure out who are the best teams? Because the conferences are so different. For example in 2023 the Big Ten has fourteen teams, plays nine conference games, and tries to not play any FCS teams. The SEC also has fourteen teams but only play eight conference games and almost all of their teams play an FCS team. So is a one loss B1G team better than an undefeated SEC team? Teams in these conferences may have no common opponents so it's very difficult to match them up against one another.
In the four team playoff era, it was generally accepted that if you were an undefeated power conference champion, you'd be in the playoff. 2023 was the first year that didn't hold though as 13-0 ACC champion Florida State was ranked #5 behind #4 12-1 SEC champion Alabama. But even taking out undefeated champions, you'd have years with one undefeated champion and four one loss champions. Which one loss champion gets left out when none of them played each other and may not have even played common opponents?
It gets even more complicated when you consider the 'strength' of the conferences. For the last dozen or so years, the SEC has been considered the strongest conference with the B1G close behind. The other conferences had some very strong teams at the top (Clemson in the ACC, Oregon in the PAC-12, Oklahoma in the Big 12...) but the rest of the conference was considered weak.
And then there's conference re-alignment. College teams can move between conferences. The Big Ten has had ten teams since 1949 after the University of Chicago dropped out and Michigan State College (later named Michigan State University) joined. But in 1990 Penn State joined. They kept the Big Ten name as it already had a lot of cache. Penn State was previously an independent team. In 2010 Nebraska moved from the Big 12 to the Big Ten.
Quick aside, the Big 12 was named so because it had twelve teams when it formed in 1994. When Nebraska and Colorado (to the PAC-10/12) moved in 2010, they were reduced to ten teams. So for a few years you had the Big 12 with ten teams and the Big Ten with twelve teams.
Anyway, Rutgers and Maryland joined the Big Ten in 2013 taking them up to their current fourteen teams. And as of June 2024, USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington will all join the Big Ten taking it to eighteen teams. The conference will spread from New Brunswick, New Jersey to Los Angeles, California. USC and UCLA announced joining the Big Ten in June of 2022. In July of 2023 Colorado stated their intent to re-join the Big-12. Within a few months, the rest of the conference fell apart leaving only Oregon State and Washington State in the PAC-12/2.
I mention the sorry demise of the PAC-12 as it affects the twelve team playoff starting next year. The format seems a lot more simple. The top five conference champions will get in along with seven 'at large' teams. All the rankings will be set by the CFP committee. The top four champions will get a bye while the lower 8 teams will play a game at the higher ranked teams stadium. The next week's quarter finals will be played at various bowls. The next week's semi finals will be played at another two bowls, while the national championship game will still be played at another site not associated with a bowl.
Before the PAC-12's demise, this was the top six conference champions along with six at large teams. It's basically set up so that all of the 'power' conferences get their champion in and one group of five is guaranteed to be in. But it's not specifically stated that way. If, by some miracle, the Big 12 champion is ranked below the Mountain West and AAC champions, they'd both get in while the Big 12 champion would be left out, if not ranked high enough to be an at large team.
If the 12 team playoff were in place this year, consider the PAC-12 still exists and using the 6 champions, 6 at large, system it would look like this:
So Liberty would play at Florida State, Missouri would play at Oregon, Ole Miss would play at Georgia, and Penn Sate would play at Ohio State. Michigan, Washington, Texas, and Alabama would have a bye and play the winners of those games.
There's a lot of debate as to whether this is better or worse. College football as a whole is a constantly moving target. I haven't even talked about the major changes in signing periods, player transfers with the ability to play the next year, and NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) rules have affected.
To me though, this takes out one of the biggest problems... who is better than who. Florida State was primarily left out of the playoff because they last their star quarterback at the end of the season. Even though they won all of their games, including one against a rival and their championship game, using backup quarterbacks, they were considered weaker than Alabama. How were they considered weaker? By the fact that the SEC is considered stronger than the ACC and using the 'eye test'. The eye test is the stupidest way to judge a team, in my opinion. You watch games and guess what team is better.
Because Florida State was left out, they ended up matched against Georgia in the Orange Bowl. Almost all of the Georgia players stayed to play with only their star tight end opting to not play. Florida State on the other hand had almost half of their team opt to not play due to transferring or deciding to prep for the NFL draft. Georgia absolutely CRUSHED Florida State 63-3. That 60 point margin of victory is the largest in any bowl. Ever. Would it have been different if Florida State didn't have all the opt outs? I can't say for certain, but I bet it would have at least been closer if not outright competitive.
But neither Florida State nor Georgia had any chance of being the national champion and sadly that's all that matters. The Cotton Bowl with Ohio State and Missouri and the Peach Bowl with Ole Miss and Penn State were similar. Next year there will be twelve teams in the hunt for the national championship. Twelve teams were players (or at least starters) will be unlikely to opt out.
Now, with all that written, I've still barely scratched the surface of college football. The pageantry, the short season, the rivalries, the bands, the traditions... I could go on for pages and pages of what makes this a great sport to follow. But I think you can see from my writings here that I'm a fan of college football in general. I follow it all year round. And I'm specifically a University of Michigan fan.
My fandom of Michigan started while I was in high school. At the time, I followed several sports. I mainly watched sports with my dad and he was always a 'home team' fan. Detroit Tigers baseball, Detroit Lions football, Detroit Pistons basketball, Detroit Red Wings hockey. I remember following the 1984 baseball season. Every game that I watched, I kept a record of every single at bat. Strikes, balls, hits, fouls. I had a full notebook full of those records. I made a poster for the world series that year as the Detroit Tigers were in it against the San Diego Padres.
I remember watching the Lions but really remember it when they got Barry Sanders at running back. He was a bright star on a fairly bleak team. Around that same time I remember paying closer attention to the Pistons as they seemed to be really good (championships in 1989 and 1990). It was similar with the Red Wings.
But with all of these, my 'fandom' waxed and waned with their win/loss record. I liked these teams when they won and didn't care about them when they lost. That's still mostly true to this day. I'm watching the Detroit Lions closer this year than I have in decades because they're currently 11-5 and already locked into the playoffs. I haven't watched a Pistons game in years.
But sometime in highschool, between 1989 and 1992, I started to watch Michigan Football closer than other sports. Michigan is one of the few states to have two major universities, both good at football. The University of Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State University Spartans. In Junior High we had a spirit day and were encouraged to wear either a U of M or MSU t-shirt. I didn't have one and mom said she'd buy me one. She just needed to know which one I wanted. As a 'hometown' fan, dad and I watched both teams regularly. I honestly have no idea what made me pick U of M over MSU... but I did and the rest, as they say, is history.
I clearly remember watching Bo Schembechler's last season and being disappointed that they were changing coaches. But when Lloyd Carr became coach after Gary Moeler, I just loved it all that much more. Two years later, in 1997, Michigan won the national title. Better yet, coach Carr regularly beat Michigan's rivals. Michigan State, Notre Dame, and most of all, Ohio State. It wasn't until 2001 that my fandom really got tested.
You see, it's easy to be a fan of a good team. Michigan didn't beat everybody, but they regularly beat their biggest rival, Ohio State. They beat them so much that it's one of the biggest reasons Ohio State fired their coach, John Cooper. John Cooper's record against Michigan was 2-10-1. Their next coach, Jim Tressel, ended up with a 9-1 record against Michigan, including seven straight games. It wasn't exactly a dark time for Michigan but it wasn't the bright years I was used to.
But I was still a fan.
In 2007 Lloyd Carr retired and Michigan hired a hip young new coach. Rich Rodriguez from West Virginia. He was an offensive guru and was going to modernize Michigan's stale offense. He was going to be the spark that brought 'Michigan Back'. Yeah, Rich Rod didn't do that. His first year at Michigan was 3-8. Michigan worst season. Ever. It was the first time Michigan didn't play in a bowl in 33 years. Rich Rod stayed around for a couple more years but in 2011 Michigan introduced Brady Hoke as their next coach. Brady Hoke was supposed to be a return to the 'Michigan Family' as he'd coached under Gary Moeler and Lloyd Carr and he was a HUGE Michigan fan ever since he was a kid.
While Brady had some initial success, his teams got worse every year until in 2014 he had a losing record. Rich Rod had two losing seasons and Hoke had one, being the only three losing seasons for Michigan since 1975.
2015 could be called the beginning of the current Michigan dynasty as that's when they hired Jim Harbaugh. Jim Harbaugh played quarterback at Michigan between 1982 and 1986. He played in the NFL from 1987 to 2001. But playing isn't coaching.
Coach Harbaugh started as an assistant at Western Kentucky in 1994 (yes, while he was playing in the NFL, he was an unpaid assistant for his father John Harbaugh who was Western Kentucky's head coach). He was a quarterback coach for the Oakland Raiders for a year before becoming the head football coach for the University of San Diego. He got them to winning records (including conference champions) before moving to Stanford.
A quick word about Stanford University football. Stanford is a very demanding academic university that doesn't make exceptions for their athlete's. It's difficult to get into Stanford on an academic basis, let alone be athletically gifted enough to compete. And it isn't like Stanford competed in a group of five or FCS level. They were in the PAC-10/12.
Before Harbaugh got to Stanford they were historically bad but he left with a winning record.
Harbaugh was only there for three years before moving on to coach the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL. They too were historically bad and hadn't had a winning season in 9 years. But in three years Harbaugh took them to three playoffs and the superbowl.
I say all that about coach Harbaugh because I believe it makes him truly special to college football players. Almost all college football players have dreams of making it to the NFL. Coach Harbaugh can relate to them as a former college football player himself. They can relate to them as a former NFL player. They can relate to them as a former NFL coach. And of course, he has a history of rebuilding bad college football programs.
For his first few years, he brought Michigan back from the brink. He didn't beat his rivals a lot in his first few years, but he had winning records, went to bowl games, and ran a good program. The 2020 COVID year though was a blow. A blow for coach Harbaugh and for the Michigan football program as they went 2-4 and didn't even play Ohio State due to COVID.
I remember a lot of my friends and fellow fans calling for him to be fired. As a fan, I didn't like the idea. Besides the COVID year, he'd done well. And there wasn't really someone to step up and be an obvious choice for a 'next' coach. Coach Harbaugh took the huge step of taking an almost 50% pay cut to keep his job.
And then... winning winning winning.
In 2021 Michigan lost to Michigan State but won every other game before Ohio State. It looked like it would be a 'normal' Jim Harbaugh Michigan year. Beat all the teams you're supposed to beat, lose to your rivals, lose in a bowl game, and end up ranked between 15 and 10. But then Michigan beat Ohio State for the first time in nine years. And it wasn't even close as Michigan won 42--27. Michigan followed that up by winning the Big Ten and going to its first CFP game ever. Sadly, they ended the season by being crushed by Georgia.
The following year Michigan went to the Ohio State game undefeated. It was just expected that Ohio State would win. They had a better team and passed 'the eye test'. The previous year was played at Michigan while this year was at Ohio Stadium. The previous year was cloudy and snowy while this year it was sunny and relatively warm. And of course Ohio State wanted revenge and to re-establish themselves as the cream of the crop since they too were undefeated. Michigan whooped them 45-23, won the Big Ten and got into the CFP again. This time they lost to TCU in a game where it was more about Michigan losing rather than TCU winning.
And now this year. As a fan, I'm over the moon giddy. Michigan was again undefeated going into the Ohio State game. Michigan beat Ohio State for the third time in a row. The last time Michigan did that was 1995-1997. Michigan won the Big Ten for the third time in a row (something no team has ever done).
On New Year's Day this year, my brother B and I watched Michigan line up to play Alabama in the Rose Bowl. Michigan hadn't played in the Rose Bowl since 2007 and were playing the Big Bad SEC champion. Michigan was ranked as the number one team in the country and favored to win, according to Vegas, by 4.5 points. But everybody was calling for Alabama to win. Alabama was 'just better' according to the 'eye test'.
Michigan beat Alabama 27-20 in overtime.
And now tomorrow Michigan will play against Washington in the CFP National Championship Game. I couldn't be more excited about it.
So, what makes me a fan of Michigan football specifically and college football in general? It's the only sport and the only team I feel this way about. No baseball, no basketball, no hockey. Not the Olympics and certainly not soccer. In high school I was in the marching band so I attended all the home football games but I also attended all the home basketball games and I didn't develop a love for that. I was a professional photographer for figure skating and gymnastics and probably knew more about Olympic level skating gymnastics than most people, but I'm not a fan of those.
Entertainment wise I guess I could say I'm a Star Trek fan. I'm a fan of certain film makers like Christopher Nolan and Aaron Sorkin. As a kid I was a fan of the Transformers and GI Joe and Voltron and other cartoons, but none of that lasted into adulthood. I don't follow any of these things like I do college football.
For college football I signed up for The Athletic as soon as they had a college football section. It was a service I had to pay for. I even signed up for ESPN+ when it was just extra content on their website, just so I could get more college football content. I start out every day with a college football newsletter. Every Day! This isn't just during the season as I want to read about the 'way too early' top 25 list after the national championship game. I want to read about what recruits are signing with which teams. I want to know what coaches are taking what jobs. I want to follow the NFL draft to see where my favorite players end up (and then promptly stop following them as I don't care about their pro careers, outside of former Michigan players like Tom Brady). I want to read about spring practice. I want to read about upcoming schedules and rule changes and conference re-alignment. I want to read about fall practice and all the predictions for the upcoming season. And my reading material only increases during the season as I want to read about just about every game.
I've listened to podcasts for quite awhile on my work commutes, especially when I was driving one hour each way to and from work. But when college football podcasts started becoming more and more common, I flipped over to listening to them almost exclusively. That's ten hours of college football content every week outside of games!
And even if I just accept being a college football fan, why Michigan? It's understandable when I was younger as they were the home town team. But I could have switched my fandom to MSU when they became the dominant team in the state. Hell, MSU made it to the playoffs six years before Michigan did (MSU got their ass handed to them by Alabama in the 2015 playoff). But through thick and thin, I'm a Michigan fan.
And as my brother and I've discussed, I'm not a true fanatic. I don't think everything Michigan does is right and good. Michigan suspended coach Harbaugh for the first three games of this season because he not only had a recruiting violation, he lied about it to the NCAA. The NCAA will take years to end their investigation and lay out their punishment, but Michigan stood up and pre-emptively punished themselves. In the middle of the season there was a scandal about Michigan involving sign stealing.
A quick aside about sign stealing in college football. Pro football has a system where the coach can talk to the quarterback or the captain of the defense in their helmets. There IS no sign stealing in the NFL. College football doesn't have that. Instead you have a wide variety of hand signals and literal signs held up on the sideline to signal what play they are supposed to call. If the opposing team can read these, they'll know what play is coming and be able to counter it accordingly. Technically, stealing signs isn't against any rules.
With that said, what Michigan is accused of is sending people to opposing teams' games and filming them. They then go through the film to figure out the signs well in advance. Sending people to opponents games in advance of playing them and filming them are both in violation of rules.
So far, it's been proven that an assistant on Michigan's staff, Connor Stallions, was doing this. He was hired because he was a 'sign stealing guru'. So far though, it doesn't look like any assistant coach or Jim Harbaugh in particular knew about this. They just looked at Connor Stallions as having a good ability to steal signs during the game like anybody else would. When it came to light, Stallions resigned. An assistant coach was found to be covering up computer records regarding this, and he was promptly fired. And finally, Michigan accepted the Big Ten's disciplinary action for the practice of suspending coach Harbaugh for the last three games of the season. That hurt as not only did nobody have any evidence that coach Harbaugh had any knowledge of it, it would also include Michigan's two toughest games, Penn State and Ohio State. And worse, the suspension was laid out hours before the Penn State game.
But Michigan accepted it. As a fan, I'm waiting for more information. If its found out that it was just Connor Stallions, then I consider the matter closed. They obviously haven't done it for their three hardest games (Penn State, Ohio State, Alabama) and they still won, and the punishment already meted out would fit the 'unsportsmanlike' crime. BUT, if it's found out that either the assistant coaches or coach Harbaugh himself knew about it and maybe even participated in it? Throw the book at them. Vacate wins. Vacate their B1G title. Suspend the guilty coaches for multiple games and have a show-cause attached to their contract (where they'd need the NCAA's permission to get a job at another college).
I'm a fan. I'm not a blind fan.
And that's something that Michigan has stood up well for. They do 'it' the right way.
I've wanted to write up a post about being a Michigan fan for years. I've had the Michigan header graphic up there for years and have written a few times about football in more general terms, but wanted this all out there.
GO BLUE!
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