Blue-Blood Michigan With Some Surprising Losing Records

When you play football for as long as Michigan has, you're going to have some head-scratching losses — but so does every other Blue Blood program.

Michigan has been playing football since 1883. Obviously the Wolverines are the winningest program in the history of the sport, but they don't have a winning record against everyone. A random yet interesting tweet from a few days ago gives Blue Blood status to just eight programs — Michigan included — and lists every school that each college football power has a losing record against.

There are 8 College Football Blue Bloods 🩸

These are who the Blue Bloods have losing records against.

Which losing record surprises you the most? pic.twitter.com/XSDwtfao61

— Big Game Boomer (@BigGameBoomer) February 15, 2021

You can actually make a pretty strong argument that Michigan has the best "losing" resume of all eight programs, but there are certainly a couple of head scratching marks on U-M's list. 

It's a little surprising that Michigan is 0-1 against Arizona State, Kansas State and Mississippi State, but obviously the teams just hardly ever play each other and those respective teams got U-M on that given day.

It's also a little surprising that Michigan has played both South Carolina and Utah four times and has a 1-3 record against both middling programs. A few of those losses have happened during the Jim Harbaugh era, but neither program has ever been dominant. If U-M could somehow face them a few more times, the Wolverines could turn the tides in those matchups.

The 0-1 mark against Toledo is obviously Michigan's worst losing record on this list. In no world should a Toledo team come into Ann Arbor and leave with a victory, but that's exactly what happened back in 2008 on Rich Rodriguez's watch. It doesn't matter that it's been 13 years — it's still unfathomable and inexcusable. It seems plausible that Michigan will square that up at some point and hopefully will be able to take the lead in that series as early season games against MAC schools are pretty commonplace for the Wolverines.

On the flip side, having a losing record against Alabama, Florida State, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and USC is nothing to be ashamed of. Obviously three of those schools are also on this graphic as fellow Blue Bloods and, depending on how big you wanted to make the list, Tennessee and Florida State might get some votes as well. 

When you play football for more than 100 years like all of these programs have, there are going to be some stubbed toes along the way. Michigan doesn't have many with a total of just 26 losses. For comparisons sake, five of the other teams have that many or more losses against one team on their list. Granted, most have a rivalry against a big time school, but Michigan does as well — it just currently holds the lead against Ohio State and Notre Dame.

Every school on here has a loss, or some losses, it can't defend. Alabama's 2-3 record against Louisiana Tech seems fake, but it's not. Nebraska doesn't really have a super embarrassing example but being 0-1 against Duke is never a good thing in football. For Notre Dame it's the 0-1 mark against UConn. Like, how? For Ohio State it's the loss against Air Force. You might assume that it happened way back in the day when the service academies were dominant, but it didn't. It was the 1990 Liberty Bowl. Air Force won that game 23-11 to give OSU its 0-1 mark against the Falcons. Oklahoma's list isn't that bad but being 0-2 against Illinois and Indiana is pretty surprising. For Texas it's the 3-8 mark against Vanderbilt. Again...how? Finally there's USC, who has an 0-1 record against Kansas. In football.

It's a fun list to look at. It's also fun to have the Blue Blood discussion. I don't think many people would remove any of these teams from this list, but I imagine several other programs would be argued for. 

What say you?