Michigan Football Ranked No. 15 in 2020 Preseason Coaches Poll
After what most would call an underwhelming season that saw Michigan finish at 9-4 in 2019, the Wolverines are pretty much right where you'd expect them in the first preseason top-25 rankings that dropped earlier today. The Wolverines came in at No. 15 in the Coaches Poll released by USA Today.
Michigan is one of six Big Ten teams ranked in the top-25 and sit behind Ohio State (No. 2), Penn State (No. 7) and Wisconsin (No. 12) within the top 15. Minnesota (No. 18) and Iowa (No. 23) round out the rest of the teams from the conference. Of the five other Big Ten teams in the preseason top-25, only Iowa is not currently on Michigan's schedule in 2020.
Michigan obviously didn't receive any first-place votes after finishing the season with four losses last year and will continue to look up at Ohio State as the Buckeyes continue their dominance over the conference. OSU received 17 first-place votes behind only Clemson, which received 38.
It's going to be really interesting to see how rankings are released and conducted this year with each conference scheduled to do something a little bit different from one another. The Big Ten and ACC have already released their revised schedules, while the Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC are still figuring everything out on their ends.
Here are the full top-25 rankings: (Team (first place votes), overall points
1. Clemson (38), 1589
2. Ohio State (17), 1555
3. Alabama (4), 1495
4. Georgia, 1345
5. LSU (6), 1330
6. Oklahoma, 1315
7. Penn State, 1199
8. Florida, 1176
9. Oregon, 1164
10. Notre Dame, 1012
11. Auburn, 898
12. Wisconsin, 887
13. Texas A&M, 807
14. Texas, 703
15. Michigan, 687
16. Oklahoma State, 524
17. Southern California, 521
18. Minnesota, 494
19. North Carolina, 415
20. Utah, 241
21. Central Florida, 232
22. Cincinnati, 229
23. Iowa, 204
24. Virginia Tech, 143
25. Iowa State, 135
Brown's Breakdown
I really don't have much of an issue with where Michigan is ranked. There are a few teams immediately ahead of Michigan that I think you could have a discussion about, but I'm not exactly pounding the table during any of those talks.
I think you could make an argument that the Wolverines could be ahead of Texas, Texas A&M and maybe Auburn, but maybe not. If you pitted Michigan against all three of those teams on neutral fields, I think you'd get some pretty interesting results and if you asked people to pick the winner of those games you'd definitely get some sort of a split.
As usual, I think Notre Dame is ranked too high to start the season, and Michigan did wear them out last year, but with what the Irish have returning and what U-M has to replace, I can't get too heated over the current locations on the list.
U-M may very well end up being better than Wisconsin this season, but after the drubbing in Madison last year, there's no way you can put the Wolverines ahead of the Badgers.
So for now, No. 15 is fine for Michigan. That's about where they should be and, if history holds true, that's about where they'll finish. Since Jim Harbaugh became the head coach, Michigan has finished with at least three losses each year. Michigan's average finish in the coaches poll is 13.5 when ranked. If you throw in the 2017 season, where U-M finished unranked and 8-5, the average finish would actually be lower than 13.5.
That's been the story of Michigan's existence since Harbaugh took over — the Wolverines are good, not great.
