The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1438965
JANUARY 2022 THE WOLVERINE 29 ning up the score. There are few in the game he respects more than Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, he said before the game, and he was sincere. But U-M still had a case to make, and upon further review, Harbaugh could be seen explaining that to his assistants through the headset. "We have a chance to be the No. 1 seed," he appeared to be mouthing. Freshman quarterback J.J. McCarthy proceeded to hand the ball to fellow frosh Donovan Edwards for the score that put the capper on a 42-3 blowout win. Perhaps nobody in the country was playing better football than Harbaugh's squad at the end of the season. The Wol- verines hammered then-No. 2 Ohio State in dominant fashion, amassing 297 yards rushing, before thrashing the Hawkeyes the way few teams do. Iowa entered as one of the nation's top defenses, but U-M scored touchdowns on four of five second-half possessions — and took over with 58 seconds left on the other drive. An offense that had struggled in the red zone didn't attempt a field goal in its last two contests against outstanding oppo- nents, with Jake Moody — Michigan's first Lou Groza Award winner as the nation's top kicker — getting all his work on extra points and kickoffs. It was more than enough to secure the program's first playoff berth. It just wasn't enough for the No. 1 overall seed. Alabama stole that from U-M with its 41-24 drubbing of previously undefeated Georgia in the SEC championship game played only hours earlier. In a truly "what have you done for me lately" situation, the selection committee moved the Crimson Tide from No. 4 to No. 1, placing Michigan second, Georgia third and undefeated (and previously No. 3) Cincinnati fourth. As a result, the Wolverines and Bull- dogs will square off in the Dec. 31 Orange Bowl semifinal, preceded by Alabama vs. Cincinnati in the Cotton Bowl. Asked by the ESPN talking heads what made the difference in the seeding, selection com- mittee chairman Gary Barta pointed di- rectly to the SEC title game. "Let's begin with the game that was played last night," he said Dec. 5. "Going into the game, Georgia was undefeated. They've been ranked No. 1 by the com- mittee all along. Not only did Alabama beat Georgia, but the way they beat them. … They controlled the game pretty much from start to finish. So there's that. And when you add that to their body of work, their other wins — Ole Miss, Arkansas, etc. "Michigan, obviously, had a big win two weeks in a row now, looking great against Ohio State and then against Iowa. But at the end of the day, the com- plete [Alabama] victory over Georgia … the committee came out of there with a strong consensus that Alabama was one, Michigan was two." Most believed the committee would seed the teams the way they did for one reason in particular — to avoid a potential rematch between the Crimson Tide and Bulldogs until the Jan. 10 national cham- pionship game in Indianapolis. Barta insisted that wasn't the case. "What the committee does, we come into the room and we take and line up the teams, talk about their strengths, their weaknesses, their wins, their losses," he said. "… We rank them one through four, in this case one through six [Notre Dame and Ohio State being No. 5 and No. 6] and we don't look at matchups. We look at who belongs at one, two, three and four." There wasn't much controversy, if any, about who was in given the Bearcats won over No. 5, and No. 6 OSU had two losses. "Cincinnati is the last remaining unde- feated team in the country. They just won a conference championship," Barta said. "Early in the year they beat Notre Dame at Notre Dame … they're ranked next in line. … The committee's strong consensus is that Cincinnati comes in at No. 4." AN UNLIKELY RISE In many years, that would make the Bearcats — the first Group of Five team to make the CFP — the talk of the town, Cinderella story, belle of the ball; choose your cliché. There was little doubt, however, that Harbaugh and his team were the story of the year in college football heading into the postseason. The Wolverines became the first team since the playoff started in its current form in 2014 to start the sea- son unranked yet rise to make the four- team field. They might have had an undisputed claim to the throne, FOX analyst Joel Klatt noted during the Big Ten champi- onship game telecast, had it not been for some "controversial calls" in a 37-33 loss at Michigan State. Among other things, replay officials took an Aidan Hutchin- son touchdown off the board following a David Ojabo sack in the second quar- ter, a move the Big Ten acknowledged was incorrect — "among several others," Harbaugh would say — in the controver- sial loss. U-M didn't sulk after the setback; in Redshirt sophomore running back Hassan Haskins and the Michigan ground game will try to keep up their impressive season against Georgia, which enters the CFP No. 3 nationally in rushing defense. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL