The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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158 ■ THE WOLVERINE 2024 FOOTBALL PREVIEW F or the first time since 1998, when Nebraska was coming off a No. 1 finish in the coaches poll the prior season, a defending national champion has a new head coach, with Sherrone Moore taking over for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. Moore was the obvious choice for the job, with Harbaugh having endorsed him and athletics director Warde Manuel not even interviewing any other candidates. Minus full-time head-coaching experi- ence, he checks all the boxes, and he's too talented a coach and too special an indi- vidual to have passed over. Replacing a legend won't be easy, though. Harbaugh was quite literally the perfect man for the job, and the very fact that he drew NFL interest, and eventually an offer from the Los Angeles Chargers, is one of the reasons why. He also grew up in Ann Arbor, was an All-America quarter- back for the Wolverines and led them to championship heights as a coach. His final three teams won 40 of 43 games between 2021 and January 2024. Michigan football historian and best- selling author John U. Bacon believes Harbaugh's right there among the best in Wolverine history, along with Fielding H. Yost (1901-23, 1925-26) and Bo Schem- bechler (1969-89), though any compari- son across eras that different is apples to oranges. "Fielding Yost had 25 years total," Bacon explained. "Yost had 10 Big Ten titles and six national titles. Bo had 13 Big Ten titles and no national titles. "So, Harbaugh can't top those num- bers, except for national titles. But in this era, and what he took over, in an apples and oranges contest, I have to say those three are your Mt. Rushmore — one, two and three — and after that [Fritz] Crisler, probably, and [Lloyd] Carr has got a case. Maybe those five. "I can make a case that Harbaugh in his era, his accomplishments are as good or greater than Yost or Bo." It's harder for Big Ten teams to compete nationally now, of course. In 2023, Michi- gan became the first national champ from the conference since Ohio State in 2014 and just the third this century. Playing 15 games is also new, and the Wolverines beat everybody they lined up against. Bacon believes the six-game run of wins over Penn State, Maryland, Ohio State, Iowa, Alabama and Washington is un- equaled in program history. "That stretch is as good as it gets. That season is as good as it gets," Bacon stated. When Moore is asked about his vision for this next era for the Wolverines, he brings up words like "physicality" and "tough- ness" and "togetherness" and "brother- hood." Those were all staples under Har- baugh and the great Michigan teams over the decade. "He's also, from my knowledge of him personally, one of my favorite guys in coaching, a first-class act, and what you see is what you get," Bacon said of Moore. "And Michigan can have no complaints about, 'Does he fit the culture?' He is the culture. All pluses there." There are no guarantees, however. Har- baugh took over a failing program and won, while Rich Rodriguez came to U-M follow- ing a legend in Carr and failed. "The pressure is immense. As far as pressure goes, ask Gary Moeller in 1990 and ask Bennie Oosterbaan in 1948," Bacon noted. "Those are the last times anybody at Michigan went through this." Oosterbaan, for what it's worth, won a national title in his first year after replacing Crisler, and Moeller beat Ohio State in the first post-Schembechler season. Fear Factor Is On Michigan's Side Two. That's the number of Michigan schol- arship players who have lost to Ohio State as a Wolverine. Only safety Quinten Johnson and long snapper William Wag- ner were on the team for a 2019 loss to the Buckeyes, the Wolverines' last, and neither played in the game anyway. Ohio State, meanwhile, doesn't have a single player who's beaten Michigan as a Buckeye. It just took one win over Ohio State in 2021 to allow the olives to start flowing out of the jar, with Michigan's streak now up to three in a row. The same mental edge U-M has now is the one the Buckeyes car- ried for the better part of the previous two decades, when Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer led them to a combined 16-1 record versus the Maize and Blue. It's also what Michigan possessed for most of the 1990s, when U-M rattled off seven wins in the series, including as un- derdogs against three top-five-ranked Buckeye squads (1993, '95, '96). OSU head man John Cooper won over 70 percent of his games overall but was fired due to his 2-10-1 mark against the rival to the north. That's how big "The Game" is. The similarities are there for current OSU coach Ryan Day, who's now 1-3 against Michigan. He's lost three Big Ten games in five seasons, but all three were to the Wolverines, meaning there's a ton of pressure on him heading into the 2024 campaign. "The proof will be this year," Bacon said. "Can Michigan beat them with a team that costs less money and might not be as good as Ohio State? Right now, Ohio State is the favorite team — in June, for what that's worth — but this will be the year you see if the Cooper syndrome is back or not." One thing's for sure: Michigan knows how to beat Ohio State. And Nov. 30 in Co- lumbus, the Wolverines will play as hard as they can, as fast as they can, as long as they can — without worry, most importantly. "They will have absolutely no fear," Bacon said. And that counts for a whole heck of a lot. ❑ SAYFIE BLITZ CLAYTON SAYFIE Staff writer Clayton Sayfie has covered Michigan athletics for The Wolverine since 2019. Contact him at Clayton.Sayfie@on3.com and follow him on X (Twitter) @CSayf23. Sherrone Moore, who guided Michigan to four wins as an interim head coach in 2023, has big shoes to fill. Former head coach Jim Harbaugh's teams won 40 of their last 43 games. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL Sherrone's Show