These Are The Good Old Days Of Michigan Football

Who’s got it better than us? In the Big Ten, nobody. There’s no need to recap what happened on Saturday afternoon. Michigan, the football team without a coach in six of their 12 games this year beat Ohio State for the third year in a row. There was drama, obviously, but there was no controversy. The better team took care of business and won. This was a win that didn’t just validate what this 2023 version of Michigan football has done; it validated the last two years and every single person who believed that those teams weren’t legitimate. What are they going to say now? 

We can’t lose sight of how quickly this got turned around. For seventeen years Michigan fans waited to climb the mountain top again. They would have good teams here and there, but they never had a good team to win the Big Ten. They beat Ohio State in 2011, a year in which Ohio State basically didn’t have a coach. They hit rock bottom following a disastrous covid campaign in 2020. The fact that we’re sitting here in 2023 with three straight wins over Ohio State, most likely three straight Big Ten championships, and three straight playoff appearances is the sign of a program that is among the best of the best. Whether he’s on the sidelines or not, Jim Harbaugh has fulfilled his destiny at Michigan. This is finally the place to be once again. 

I don’t know how this ends. I have tremendous confidence that Michigan will go to Indianapolis and take care of business next week against Iowa. After that, who knows? There will be people who believe that the Jim Harbaugh era at Michigan won’t be complete until they win a National Championship. Those people are allowed to feel that way. I want to win a National Championship, too. But at the same time, I wouldn’t take these last three years back for anything. This is a football team that has lost one conference game in three years, and it was because Kenneth Walker turned into Barry Sanders for an afternoon. 

This win against Ohio State felt kind of weird, and that’s because it should’ve. It is an expectation now that Michigan will beat Ohio State. One can be a fluke, two is a winning streak, and three is a trend. This is Michigan’s conference. These are the good old days.