The Rebirth, Rise And Final Climb For Michigan Football
“Michigan football, welcome to the college football playoff.”
It was a sentence fans never thought they’d live to hear. Everyone is told football programs are cyclical like seasons. One day you could be bathing in the sun of success and the next in the middle of the coldest, darkest days of winter. For Michigan fans, it seemed even worse.
Since the National Championship of 1997, the program has gone through some tumultuous times. After the turn of the century, the wolverines couldn’t beat their arch rivals. Legendary coach Lloyd Carr left the program having lost 6 of the last 7 to the Buckeyes, a trend that wouldn’t change for another decade.
The wolverines then went through two coaching failures with the Rich Rod days of 3-9, 5-7, and 7-6 with a 52-14 loss in the Gator Bowl. Former athletic director Dave Brandon then brought in “Michigan Man,” Brady Hoke, who showed promise in 2011 leading the wolverines to an 11-2 season with wins over Ohio State and Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl.
For the first time in a while for the maize and blue faithful, it seemed, there was light at the end of the tunnel. It would turn out there wasn’t. At least not in the short term. Hoke’s tenure atop Michigan football ended almost as quickly as his predecessor’s with three continually worse seasons and a 5-7 season in 2014 to lead to his firing.
Then, the so-called “Savior of Michigan football,” the true “Michigan Man,” Jim Harbaugh returned to Ann Arbor from his time in the NFL. Immediately fans were told they’d beat Ohio State in no time and head to the college football playoff. Instead, the immediate promise proved to be a mirage. There were more twists and turns in the story of Michigan’s redemption yet to be written.
After an instant turnaround to relevance, the maize and blue took major steps backward with blowout losses to Ohio State in 2018 and 2019 (62-39 and 56-27). Harbaugh’s seat began to heat up with no wins against OSU. Fans tricked with recency bias and greener pastures began to question if life with Brady Hoke was better. “Well Hoke never got blown out by OSU,” people said, forgetting the blowouts he had to the Spartans and the unacceptable losses to teams below them. It seemed the losses to the Buckeyes were a metaphorical lighting of a match for the Michigan program.
What came after was unthinkable. Jim Harbaugh’s wolverines, whose teams at their worst still beat teams of lower prestige, face planted in 2020. Blame the pandemic, the empty Big House and dropouts, it doesn’t matter. The 2-4 season was the implosion of what once was the Michigan football program. The flame that had been lit had finally ran out of wick. What was once a proud team was suddenly a shell of its former glory. The collapse cleaned house and culture with one man standing on top of the ashes ready to rebuild.
It was almost as if without the catastrophe of the COVID season that Michigan wouldn’t have been able to learn from its past mistakes. The program needed to burn down what once was and experience a complete cleansing. Harbaugh and Michigan seemingly reborn and renewed turned back the clock in their football ways. The Wolverines went back to the smashmouth, run-through-the-line 40 times a game and it paid off.
The were many firsts for the Wolverines during the 2021 season. They beat the Buckeyes for the first time since 2011, went to their first Big Ten Championship, and were selected to their first College Football Playoff. It was a renewal of what once was, an understanding of what could be and a belief in what should be. Despite the brilliance of the regular season, it was clear the Wolverines were a notch below the elites of college football. They were close to reaching the “A+ echelon” but weren’t there yet and the Georgia Bulldogs proved it with a 34-11 thrashing in the Orange Bowl.
Going into this season the questions were if last year was a fluke. “Can Michigan really beat Ohio State two years in a row?” After all, how could a team improve on its best season since 1997? Well, a cool, partially cloudy day in Columbus provided all the answers. The doubts were erased, the critics silenced, and the believers intensified. The firm takeaway following Michigan’s first win in Ohio since 2000 was that Michigan is finally back. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it, the Wolverines are the creme de la creme of not only the Big Ten, but possibly the entire country.
Now the renewed Wolverines are faced with one last mountain to climb - the national championship. They’ve accomplished all they can otherwise. After a perfect season and back-to-back conference championships, they’re among the final four of college football. However, now it feels like it’s time for the boys in blue to reach immortality. It all starts tomorrow in the Fiesta Bowl against the third ranked TCU Horned Frogs.
It’s fitting the Wolverines will be playing in Phoenix. Like the immortal bird in Greek mythology, the Michigan football program of the 2010s is dead. The program of the recent past left in the implosion of the 2020 pandemic season, and the team of today has risen from the ashes of what once was and has been reborn anew. Jim Harbaugh has rebuilt the program and checked off every box except reaching the summit. Is it their time again? Only time will tell.
