Should Michigan Football fans lower their expectations?
The Michigan football team has high expectations for 2016, but are they too high?
Could expectations be any higher for the 2016 Michigan Football season?
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The short answer of course is no. The longer answer is that the expectations may be far too high.
Let’s break it down.
Best defense in the country? Maybe. Let’s acknowledge this one as a distinct possibility. Not a given, certainly, but a distinct possibility. After all, they came close for a few weeks last year. Remember the three shut-outs in a row? Those weren’t against elite teams, but they showed us the caliber of players we had.
Two, maybe even three, legitimate Heisman Trophy candidates? This one is a stretch, but let’s wait and see. Jabrill Peppers could very well have a breakout season. Or not. He’s on the Paul Hornung Award Watch List, but then so are 42 other players.
Big Ten championship? This is where the dreaming seems to begin. Has everyone forgotten how long it’s been since Michigan beat Ohio State? (Reality check: Ohio State has won all but four of the last 15 meetings between the two teams.) And Little Brother – I mean, Michigan State – is not exactly a pushover either. Remember that both of those games – Ohio State and Michigan State – are on the road this year.
College Football Playoff? Oh my, nice to think about, good for some beer-in-hand July daydreaming, but really? This year?
National Championship? Let’s get serious. Las Vegas is giving the Wolverines 12-1 odds right now, and while that isn’t bad, Michigan isn’t exactly being favored either. Alabama and Ohio State are still the teams to beat, and Michigan still has a long way to go to be mentioned in the same sentence as those two programs.
Just a couple of years ago Michigan Football was tanking fast and was being referred to by just about everyone but diehard fans as “irrelevant.” Then, Jim Harbaugh became coach, the team achieved a more-than-respectable 10-3 record in 2015-2016, the recruiting picked up a notch with sleepovers and satellite camps all over the world, and suddenly Michigan Football fans are talking about winning it all.
We should all take a deep breath.
Most coaches would be talking about lowering expectations. Just improving over last season would be a tremendous goal, right?
But Harbaugh isn’t just any coach. Take a look at his record, going all the way back to his days at the University of San Diego, where in only his second year he took his team, the Tereros, to an 11-1 record and the Pioneer Football League championship. As if to put an exclamation point on that achievement, he did the exact same thing the next season, before heading off to Stanford.
Harbaugh has had a “win now” attitude since he became a coach, and “lowering expectations” doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. To be fair, when Harbaugh speaks to the media, he repeatedly says that he wants to get better each day in practice, in each game, and in each season. This constant, daily improvement strategy is inspiring and, if you’re a player, must seem attainable and measurable.
But Harbaugh surely knows the hype that surrounds his program, and he’s doing nothing to tamp it down. If anything, he’s encouraging it. He’s allowing his players to feel it, to imagine that they really can do it.
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And who knows, maybe they can.