Breaking news: Michigan Was Due for a Fall. But This Is Steeper Than Anyone Thought.
Michigan was due for a significant step back. Everybody in college football knew it, including the Wolverines’ millions of fans. The team won all 15 games last year en route to a national championship, then lost 13 draft picks and head coach Jim Harbaugh to the NFL. Some regression was inevitable.
Saturday was still a hell of a jolt, though. The Texas Longhorns walked into Ann Arbor and drew and quartered the Wolverines. Texas, merely a one-touchdown favorite coming in, won by a 31–12 score that didn’t even fully capture the lopsidedness of the performance. This was a match between the nominal defending national champions and a current national championship contender. The score was 24–3 at halftime, and at that point, Texas had controlled the ball for two-thirds of the afternoon. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers took whatever he wanted as the air gradually seeped out of the Big House, filled with 111,000 humans.
It’s not unprecedented for someone to destroy a defending champ this early in the year. (In 2020, LSU took an arguably uglier home loss in its first game post-title.) Michigan is dealing with many of the same problems that plague dozens of teams every year, including the best ones. Namely, it’s hard to resupply quickly after losing tons of good players and most of a program’s key coaches. But Michigan was also a victim of timing, as Harbaugh’s move to the Los Angeles Chargers clashed inconveniently with college football’s new calendar. Add in a dash of post-championship complacency, and you have a recipe for a rapid (if temporary) downfall that no program has ever quite brewed up before.
