Michigan football countdown to kickoff: 78 days until 2022 season
There’s much anticipation heading into the Michigan Wolverines football season, and TheWolverine.com is counting down the days until the Sept. 3 opener against Colorado State. We’ll discuss the current Michigan events, upcoming season and/or take a look at a significant number that correlates with how many days remain until kickoff, whether it be a player’s jersey number, a year, a date, a score, etc.
The Michigan vs. Ohio State game defines the season on each side. Michigan’s in-state rivalry with Michigan State, on the other hand, is important, but it’s not the end-all, be-all. With 78 days until kickoff, we look at two great examples of this — 2021 and 1978.
Michigan fell to the Spartans in 1978, 24-15, at The Big House. But the Wolverines still had a lot to play for. They went on to win the rest of their regular-season games, including a 14-3 triumph over Ohio State in Columbus, to share the conference crown with MSU. It was Michigan, not the Spartans, who earned the bid to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl, since the latter was forbidden to accept a bowl invite due to recruiting violations.
This was a unique circumstance, of course. If not for MSU’s violations, it would’ve been in the Rose Bowl. But MSU put itself in that spot, and it was known going into the final regular season game that all the Wolverines needed to do to win the league and head West was to beat the Buckeyes. And that, they did.
It was similar in 2021 — though the Spartans, who seemingly had controversy after controversy in the later years of the Mark Dantonio era, weren’t put on probation. They just suffered two losses (Purdue and Ohio State) after beating Michigan in East Lansing (in controversial fashion), 37-33, last October.
Michigan regrouped after falling at Spartan Stadium, and ran the table in the regular season, highlighted by a 42-27 beatdown of the Buckeyes, then battered Iowa, 42-3, in the Big Ten title game. Suddenly, the setback to Sparty wasn’t viewed in such a negative light. In fact, defensive end Aidan Hutchinson and others actually believed the loss was a blessing in disguise.
“Aidan will tell you, he’s not sure they win the Big Ten championship if they don’t lose to Michigan State,” his father, Chris Hutchinson, said on the ‘Hutch’ podcast. “You don’t really want to hear that, but a loss can oftentimes be more important than a win, especially if you do it early on and you do it in a fashion where it’s to your rival and it allows you to focus. Because if they win that game, they’re going to be two or three in the country, and it’s a very different season, as opposed to you just gave away a big lead at Michigan State and now you’re going to get your butts kicked against Ohio State and it’s going to be the same thing all over again.”
It was a postgame speech from Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh that started the healing process after the 37-33 loss.
“Afterwards, you didn’t hear anyone, and Jim Harbaugh — this is one of the great things Jim Harbaugh did last season — he told everyone in that room, ‘Men, this means nothing. Every goal we have is in front of us. We can still do what we came here to do. We just now have no room for error. We have to win every game, so the pressure’s on.’ And every kid took that to heart,” radio play-by-play man Jim Brandstatter, who retired after the 2021 season, said.
Harbaugh is 3-4 against Michigan State, and no, we’re not saying the Wolverines shouldn’t be better in the in-state rivalry. But when it’s all said and done — more times than not — it’s the final regular-season game that carries the most weight.
Michigan football countdown to kickoff
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