Sometimes you just have to laugh. Especially as college football media tends to be all over the place.
The offseason is a time when evaluators in the sport tend to overreact to the year that preceded, while coming up with teams that could be on the rise. Usually, those teams are ones who finished strong, but in the case of the Wolverines, whatever the record was the previous year, they’re generally not expected to improve as much as stay the same or devolve to some degree.
Such was the case for one outlet, but it’s now speaking out of both sides.
It was CBS Sports that said that second-year Michigan football head coach Sherrone Moore is the 58th-best coach in college football, and it’s the same outlet that is also saying he’ll be a heck of a lot better than its own ranking. In a piece evaluating its own rankings, CBS Sports’ Will Backus notes several coaches across the sport who will outperform expectations. Moore and Michigan made the list, noting that the Wolverines are a team on the rise.
Michigan’s 2024 season was a lot better than the 8-5 record may indicate. The Wolverines beat a top-15 USC team and closed the year with wins against Ohio State (the eventual national champs) and Alabama. Three of those five losses came against College Football Playoff teams. Of course, Jim Harbaugh reset the expectations at Michigan, but realistic minds knew that the Wolverines would take some step back in 2024 given what they lost off of their national title-winning squad. Now Moore has two hand-picked quarterbacks in Fresno State transfer Mikey Keene and five-star freshman Bryce Underwood, the No. 1 prospect in the class of 2025. It seems like a question of when, and not if, Underwood takes over Michigan’s offense. If he lives up to the hype, the Wolverines could push for the Big Ten once again.
Michigan had the best win in all of college football a year ago, having been one of two teams to beat the eventual national champion, while Oregon — the other — lost to OSU in the Rose Bowl after having beaten the Buckeyes in Eugene during the regular season. Sherrone Moore followed that up by beating an Alabama team that many expected to be in the College Football Playoff, despite having losses to Vanderbilt, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. The Wolverines did all of this with subpar quarterback play and in games where they weren’t exactly running the ball with ease.
This year, the schedule is much more amenable, with Oklahoma, Nebraska, USC, and Ohio State being the top teams on the docket. Of course, all of those, except the regular season finale against OSU, are on the road, which presents a different challenge for the maize and blue this year.
