The Michigan football team completed a perfect 15-0 season last week by defeating Washington in the national championship game to end their 2023 campaign. Wolverine fans had been anticipating a season like this for a while, and this year they were able to make it happen.
There were a lot of ups and downs that Michigan went through to get to the national title game, and a lot of their key players that came back this season could’ve gone to the NFL. They all came back for one common goal: to win a national championship. The Wolverines accomplished that goal, and now, they are hoping to continue that success going forward, and the momentum they have built can help make that happen.
Let’s take a look at what this team went through to get to where they are now. It can’t be overstated how important it is to the future of this program.
First, head coach Jim Harbaugh started off the season at home for the Wolverines as he faced a self-imposed three-game suspension because of some minor recruiting violations. That wasn’t a big deal, however, as Michigan started the season with home games against East Carolina, UNLV and Bowling Green. The Wolverines were fine for those games, but that wasn’t the only suspension that Harbaugh would face in the season.
Around the halfway point of the season, news broke that the Michigan football team was being investigated for illegal sign stealing. The culprit ended up being a low-level staffer named Connor Stalions.
Stalions bought tickets for friends and others to go to future opponents games and videotape the sidelines with their cell phones. After the investigation had been going on for a couple of weeks, Stalions resigned.
Jim Harbaugh was able to coach for Michigan for a couple of weeks after the investigation started, but then, with three weeks remaining, he was suspended by the Big Ten for the final three weeks of the regular season, and offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore had to take over head-coaching duties for the most daunting stretch of the Michigan season: @ #10 Penn State, @ Maryland and vs. #2 Ohio State. Also, they suspended him less than 24 hours before the Penn State game while the Michigan team plane was on the way to Happy Valley.
The sign-stealing investigation started as something very bad for the Michigan football team, but it actually gave the Wolverines an extra spark. This team already had all of the motivation in the world to go out and win a national title, and then they started to hear all the outsiders say that the only reason they had won the last two seasons was because they were cheating.
