This week on the College Football Game Time Podcast we visited with our old friend Bill Bender. Bill covers college football for the Sporting News (SportingNews.com) and has done so for a long time. He’s a frequent guest on 92-9 The Game so I was glad we were able to get him on the podcast this week. Bill lives up in Big 10 country and with the B10 cranking up last week, this seemed like a great opportunity to pick Bill’s brain about the conference. We touched on several topics, most notably the current state of Michigan football. The Wolverines pulled off a nice road win in primetime Saturday when they whipped up on Minnesota.
Jim Harbaugh’s return to the school he once quarterbacked has not exactly gone according to plan. Rainer Sabin wrote an interesting look at the Harbaugh era at Michigan recently for the Detroit Free Press. I wish I could find the article, I’d post a link to it. Here’s some interesting tidbits from it.
Since Harbaugh arrived in December 2014, Michigan has never played in the B10 title game.
They’ve lost every meeting with Ohio State.
1-4 Bowl record and 2-12 against AP Top 10 teams.
Haven’t finished the season higher than 10th in the final AP poll. The last three seasons they haven’t finished higher than 14th in the final rankings.
Harbaugh is going into his 6th season as the head man in Ann Arbor. Of the last five coaches that have won national championships only one, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, did so later than his fourth full year. Nick Saban won it in year three at Alabama. Urban Meyer won it in year 2 at Florida and year 3 at Ohio State.
During Harbaugh’s tenure, Michigan has cycled through 24 on-field coaches in 5 seasons. Since the NCAA opened the transfer portal in October of 2018, Michigan has seen 38 players leave the program including 11 scholarship players in the last 12 months.
Michigan has seen 31 players drafted during Harbaugh’s time. No offensive skill players have been selected higher than the third round.
According to what the voice of the Michigan Wolverines Jim Brandstatter told us on College Football Game Time Saturday morning, Jim Harbaugh will be the head coach at Michigan for as long as he wants to be there. Former Minnesota Coach Glen Mason who now works for the Big 10 Network told the Detroit Free Press that, “If he can’t get it done, who’s going to?” ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit told the paper the same thing, “If Jim Harbaugh can’t win at Michigan, who can?”
Michigan faces off against Michigan State on Saturday at 12pm ET.
Thanks for checking out the podcast this week and thanks to Bill Bender for joining us. Don’t forget to join Jon Chuckery, Randy McMichael and myself for College Football Game Time. Saturday morning from 9am until 12noon, we’ll be discussing all the big games from around the country.