The Wolverine

  MICHIGAN FOOTBALL MISCELLANEOUS NOTES • CBSSports.com ranked every college football team in the country, and Michi- gan came in at No. 45 to start the 2015 season. Big Ten rival Ohio State was the preseason No. 1 in both the USA Today Coaches' Poll released in early August and in the CBS rankings; the Associated Press has not yet unveiled its top 25. Fellow conference foes Michigan State (No. 5), Wisconsin (No. 17), Penn State (No. 28), Nebraska (No. 32) and Minnesota (No. 39) rank ahead of the Wolverines in CBS' 1-128 ratings. Non-conference opponents Utah and BYU rank No. 33 and No. 36, respectively. Michigan last began a season ranked in the preseason top 25 in 2012, when it started the year No. 8. SI.com and FoxSports.com both picked the Wolverines to finish 6-6 under first-year coach Jim Harbaugh. • Former Michigan receiver/return man Dennis Norfleet has officially been added to the roster at Tuskegee University. A 5-7 slot, Norfleet will suit up for the Alabama-based Golden Tigers, a Division II program that competes in the South- ern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, and he will be eligible immediately. The return man notched 19 kickoff returns for 438 yards last year. He finished with 94 returns for 2,203 yards, becoming the program's all-time leading kickoff returner, and also hauled in 15 passes for 111 yards last season. • Redshirt freshman Lawrence Marshall was a spring-practice and spring-game standout, showing off elite athleticism at the BUCK/rush linebacker position in- troduced by defensive coordinator D.J. Durkin, and there have been rumblings that he could emerge as "the guy" at the position. The Southfield, Mich., native was inconsistent last year, largely because he wasn't big enough at 6-4, 238 pounds, to handle the physical grind of back-to-back-to-back repetitions, but that has since changed. "After spring ball I was maybe 240 pounds, and now I'm 255," he said. "I made a big jump. I got a lot stronger and all around bigger. I feel like I can compete as an every down player, and I don't know that I could have said that in the spring. "I was more of a pass rusher type, and the coaches said to me, 'If you want to play all four downs, you have to get bigger.' I knew if I had a great summer I could put myself in a position to play a larger role this fall." Senior Royce Jenkins-Stone also enjoyed a tremendous spring at the BUCK, while senior Mario Ojemudia and true freshmen Reuben Jones and Shelton Johnson are also vying for time there. • Count Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany among those impressed with the Jim Harbaugh hire. "There's no doubt about it … it's a head-turning hire," Delany said at Big Ten Media Days. "Jim has had a great career as a player and as a college coach both at San Diego and Stanford, and then great success with the [San Francisco] 49ers. "Michigan probably had the most consistent football program from 1984 to probably six or seven years ago. I think they'd won eight or more games every

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