The Michigan Wolverines have reclaimed their rightful place at the top of college football. Here's what it means.

You are not dreaming.

It's real. Michigan won the National Championship. Go on, you can say it.

For the first time since 1997, nearly a quarter of a century ago—although the Rose Bowl was technically played on January 1, 1998, and that was when there wasn't a game to decide the national title—Michigan can truly stand as the best team in college football.

If you're still in a mental fog wondering whether what you watched on Monday night in fact happened, you're not alone. It has been 26 years since Michigan stood on this perch. You'd be forgiven for thinking that perhaps it's all just fantasy, a mythical run on PS3 or Xbox.

But yes, actually, it happened, and the rest of the college football world can suck it.

I don't feel the least bit bad about saying that, and you shouldn't either.

For years, even decades, this program has endured the jawing of rival fans and others constantly reminding it of its apparent "futility" on the national stage, how despite its many, many wins—literally more wins, in fact, than anyone else—Michigan still wasn't technically "relevant" because at the end of the day all that matters is the national championship, and the Wolverines hadn't won one since 1997. Oh, and that one is disputed! And the one before that was all the way in 1948! How pathetic!

This was especially rich from Notre Dame fans who would watch with misty eyes as their players tapped the Play Like a Champion Today sign—which rather hilariously points out their last national championship was 1988, and below it sits an equally ridiculous, comically large empty space for what they hope are future entries.

Even back then the retorts to Irish trash talk practically wrote themselves. If you really wanted to piss off a Domer you just had to remind them that 1988 is an even longer drought than 1997. Now the gap is even wider and they absolutely hate it.

Then there were the other fan bases with nebulous claims to titles. Nebraska fans, who despite the self-applied label as the "Greatest Fans in College Football," would always chirp up and declare that Michigan's 1997 title wasn't real and how even though Nebraska hadn't won one since then either they'd still get one before we did. Well, Nebraska can stew as they keep on waiting. 1997's a long time ago, fellas. Penn State fans, how's it looking? And I'm not even going to acknowledge those sad, sad Gophers. You poor, irrelevant schmucks.

Plus all the other Big Ten teams, who always knew they never had a prayer against us. You who clenched your sphincter so tight your face turned into a grape every time Michigan got closer, ever so closer, to that one thing which you couldn't stomach: the day when Michigan might just do it and win the whole damn thing.

Guess what? Here it is. That day has come. To all the haters, pundits, and detractors, you can kiss our collective Maize and Blue asses.

We're National Champs.

"The Year"

I remember the dark times.

My career as a student on campus in Ann Arbor began in Fall of 2008, Rich Rodriguez's first season. I graduated in Spring 2011, just as Brady Hoke arrived. As bookends go those are arguably the worst years in the football program's history. I left with degree in hand months before Michigan would complete an 11-win season that included a victory over Ohio State for the first time since 2003 and a win in the Sugar Bowl. What are the chances?

A mere two years before I came, Michigan students had been used to seeing winning seasons, Big Ten championships, Rose Bowls. Yeah, there was Jim Tressel who'd thrown a wrench into things, but for the most part Michigan played meaningful football that its fans and the rest of the world cared about.

If you had been a student on campus for any stretch of four years before 2008 you had probably at some point seen a fairly high degree of Michigan success, and you could have non-delusional hope that the Wolverines were at least potentially capable of putting together a special season like 1997, in any given year.

That was before the experiment with Rodriguez, which even the most patient supporters of his admitted forced a reset in expectations:

I remember thinking "this is the year" every year growing up, expecting great things literally every season until Rodriguez showed up and Mallett transferred. I don't think that now, and I can't imagine feeling like that in the future. Sometimes having an identity feels like having a ceiling.

I don't want to revisit the Rodriguez and Hoke years but the point I want to make is that a yearly optimism where people genuinely believed "This team might do it" wasn't all that uncommon. They felt it in their bones. If you were a Michigan fan you were supporting a powerhouse, a factory of football excellence.

However, in my journey, I didn't really get any of that until Harbaugh was hired. I didn't get to experience the highs of Michigan football in the Schembechler-Moeller-Carr eras, the knowledge or feeling of excitement that this program was going to kick ass.

I didn't know anything about the sport as a kid; I didn't really like or understand it. Sure, my family consisted predominantly of Michigan fans, but it wasn't a big part of my life growing up. My mom and dad and my brother would watch it and I couldn't care less.

But then somehow in 2009 I fell in love with Michigan football. Maybe it was the school spirit that I saw everywhere. The merchandise sold all over downtown, the "vibe" of Ann Arbor, the way people wore Michigan stuff all the time, which was different than other campuses I'd been to. It made me feel like I was at a special place.

Something about the aesthetics of the Michigan Wolverines—especially in their football program—really swept me off my feet. I fell in love with the combo of maize and blue—a truly awesome contrast for school colors. I fell in love with the fight song—still the greatest in college football. And I fell in love with the winged helmets.

This, and I'm in my second year on campus! I know, right? I had gone through nearly all of 2008 barely noticing how bad the football team was. I didn't know Michigan had just gone through a major coaching transition and had posted its first ever 3-9 season. People would talk about it but I had no clue what they were saying.

I didn't understand anything about football trends, about momentum or how coaches can get "on the decline," or anything like that. I didn't know jack shit about expectations or where the program had been. I just liked Michigan because it looked good, sounded good, felt good.

So thus my entry into college football fandom was accompanied by some pretty naive preconceptions. For starters I could never get why anyone would ever support a team if they weren't aesthetically pleasing. That was, like, bare minimum. I would look at a team like Iowa and their logo which looks like a bird with a testicle hanging off its eye and say to myself, "Wtf, why would anyone root for this? It looks like shit!"

Initially I developed a deep hatred not for Michigan's rivals, but for Cal and West Virginia—on the grounds that they had "stolen" Michigan's colors. How dare they!

My attachment, at least in those early days when I was a fledgling Michigan fan who happened to be over 18, wasn't based on whether the Wolverines won or lost, or whether they were any good. This makes sense considering that my three years on campus—2008, 2009, and 2010—were not exactly the most spectacular.

When older fans would regale me with stories of just how good the football team used to be, I really didn't get it. Okay, sure, I read up on the history of the program, watched those documentaries produced by the athletic department, perused blogs. But it wasn't something I experienced. It wasn't something I lived through. Not yet.

Maybe this is why I was such a Hoke apologist back in the day. 2011 was when I really got a taste of Michigan football success for the first time. But even in the Hoke years I don't think anyone can say that Michigan was truly an ass-kicking program. I mean, like, a real powerhouse. They were decent, and blew out some teams, but if you thought they were going to beat Alabama you were probably fooling yourself.

Obviously by the point Jim Harbaugh was hired I knew as much about Michigan football history as the average fan. Like most of you, I had a good idea what Michigan was getting. I was pumped.

But at the same time, just as I'd done with Hoke, I kept my expectations more oriented on process and incremental improvement and on trying to take a sober look at the place of Michigan's football program in the greater pecking order. Because I hadn't grown up seeing the Wolverines destroy everybody. I was about the helmets.

This is partly why I get a little persnickety in various discussion threads about things that most people think don't matter. I'm not a fan of the helmet stickers—they clutter up the perfection of its design. I like traditional jersey numbers for certain positions. I wish the team always wore maize pants for home games. Things like that.

I've spent a lot of time on other team sites talking to their fans—I feel it keeps me grounded on where I should be in my own fandom. And in doing that, when you're able to hear what they think about their programs, how good they should be, whether they've failed or overachieved, it helps give you a clear sense on what is delusional and what is realistic.

Iowa fans or Minnesota fans generally don't have the same expectations as Ohio State fans or Alabama fans. And the ones who do are idiots.

So I wasn't as susceptible as other Michigan fans to the Black Pit of Negative Expectations and when people within this community would say that this is the "most tortured" fan base in college football, a part of me found that ridiculous, when there are teams who have no hope to be as good as Michigan is, and a 6-6 bowl season for them is as ecstasy inducing as a win over the Buckeyes is for us.

In a world where shouting "15-0!" is a running joke in every fan base, I didn't want to buy into the pendulum swinging that way either—even if most people weren't being serious but it's possible some of them were.

I don't think I've ever expected Michigan to win a national championship. The closest I came was 2016 (maybe?) when that season was really picking up steam, because of the talent we had on that team, and because of all the fun surrounding the program.

But even with all that talent—arguably more than this 2023 group—the 2016 Wolverines still failed. At a time when it seemed like everything lined up for Michigan to go the distance, it really felt to me like perhaps they had missed their shot.

Three losses culminating in a one-point heartbreaker against Florida State in the Orange Bowl and we were forced to accept that 2016 was not The Year. Brian summed it up:

I don't know, man. I started this season's coverage off by proclaiming this to be The Year, and it more or less was. Michigan spent most of the season in the top five of the human polls and #1 in fancystats. They're about to send a dozen guys to the NFL draft. [...]

The difference between an epic season and a merely good one was razor thin and largely due to the vagaries of fate. Michigan had two spots at which they absolutely could not afford any injuries. They got it in the face at both spots. [...]

So they did not win all the things. That sucks. They were very good at all the things it was reasonable to be very good at, though, and that should offer some more confidence going forward.

I certainly wasn't outraged by what happened in 2016—at least, not from a performance standpoint. I did think it was weak sauce for Jabrill Peppers to sit out the bowl game and then weep in front of cameras about letting his teammates down before dancing his way to the NFL, only to be drafted by a Cleveland Browns organization about to go 0-16.

The next two years saw some palpable backsliding, and not all of it was Jim Harbaugh's fault. As I pointed out in my column after The Game in 2022, which echoed sentiments by countless others, Harbaugh's tenure undergoes a paradigm shift in the timeline if J.T. Barrett is ruled short in 2016. That and the other instances of stupid luck that helped the Buckeyes squeak out another dub to keep the streak going.

Still, as much as you want to fight against the narrative—"Elite coaches are supposed to win by year three!"—there was a sense that the momentum had slipped from when the program had hosted Signing With The Stars. They seemed to have given up on the fun.

After we thought there'd been a resurgence in 2018, until it resulted in another OSU loss, the hire of Josh Gattis, and the rock bottom of 2020, where the majority of the fans—including the people running this website—resoundingly gave up on the idea that Harbaugh might work out at Michigan, Ace Anbender was literally pounding the table saying "Soup! Soup! Soup!" calling for Matt Campbell at Iowa State, who is 18-20 since the 2020 season.

I went back to what had become my default setting during the Rodriguez and Hoke years. I returned expectations closer to the realm of pragmatism, of incremental progress and of realistically achievable goals. I was fine with beating Ohio State once every five years, then I started to wonder if we would ever win a game against them at all and how I could parse my Michigan fandom without ever hoping for wins in The Game.

I tried to be the Aggressively Reasonable Michigan Fan. The kind who doesn't care about the Manball label as long as Michigan won. Who believed that Michigan didn't need a superstar at quarterback, just a competent one who could convert on third down. Who didn't like the idea of running the QB all the time because the College Football Grim Reaper was sharpening his sickle and eyeing the legs.

So when Michigan beat Ohio State in 2021, I was on Cloud Nine. But a small part of me thought that was going to be it. That season was as good as Michigan was ever going to get in this new era of college football. Win the Big Ten. That's a huge milestone. Be satisfied with that. In terms of chasing dreams that's pretty good. Then if you get to the playoff you roll the dice and take a shot but you're probably going to miss, so you need to be okay with that.

Even after the highs of 2022—I'd kind of thought we'd peaked—I still found it difficult to believe and dream big things for Michigan.

Last summer I was sitting in a sports bar having lunch and an elderly Spartan couple—blissfully unaware of the hell they were about to endure with Mel Tucker—saw my Michigan gear, asked me about my thoughts on Burgergate as if it was the most important thing in the world, and then followed with a very cheeky, "So, are you winning the natty?"

They were somewhat surprised by my answer. I didn't say yes. Instead I replied that it's so hard to beat those teams in the South, and that if we somehow beat Ohio State for a third straight time and three-peat the Big Ten (this got a chuckle from them), then I'd be happy.

I wasn't going to be one of those delusional kool-aid drinkers who made fools of themselves expecting, let alone predicting, a national championship. That's not the world we live in, I told myself. Let's just get better.

Fans talk about The Year but it's usually just a hypothetical and always a dream. There are so many forces in college football pulling against you. Then you read the pre-season grumblings that Michigan hasn't done enough here or there, this part of the team is a weakness, there are too many questions, too many flaws.

I'd be amused by the delusion in other fan bases and then I'd be biting my nails at Michigan's prospects, dreading the moment when I'd be brought crashing back down to earth.

But this time, there was no crash down to earth. We are still flying into the stratosphere.

So I choose to remember the lows of Rodriguez and Hoke, the struggles of Harbaugh's early tenure to get over the hump, the confusing pit of 2020, because of what this season means. Only if you've been in the deepest valley can you know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

And for me, personally, having entered into my Michigan fandom at one of the lowest points in program history—a time of division, factions, and bickering, of people wanting the program to commit this way or that way—to see it now reach these heights, something I could only imagine in what I thought were silly childish daydreams, cannot be accurately described.

This year really was The Year and it didn't turn out to be a delusional prediction.

But really, it's felt like a lot longer, hasn't it? The last three seasons are so connected to each other that it feels like one continuous year as a singular, remarkable ascension. It feels like we've been watching the same team since 2021. This isn't just one run, one chase. It's been years in the making, since J.J. McCarthy and Blake Corum and Mike Sainristil and those guys showed up to campus, since Harbaugh first took the podium, since Michigan fans starting making youtube videos.

This is what we've been waiting for. This is the Summit.

Standing at the top, I'm enjoying the view, taking it all in.

Who's got it better than us?

The Son

If you've spent any protracted amount of time on this site, you know that the primary bloggers as well as various diary authors in the community like to occasionally whip out a reference to an obscure piece of Japanese art as an allegory for a greater sports-related point. So bear with me on this.

Granted, it may not be the most oblique allegory for me to pull in a reference to Dragon Ball, given the sensibilities of Millennials and anyone younger, but if you're unfamiliar with this thing which happens to be one of the most popular creative works conceived west of the Pacific, here's a basic rundown.

Dragon Ball and its sequel,* Dragon Ball Z, are a connected series in Japanese comic books (manga) and animation, created by writer-artist Akira Toriyama. It ultimately became an action series following martial arts superheroes, and a very human-looking alien named Goku is the hero of the story. In what is arguably the most consequential arc of the series in Z, Goku learns of his alien heritage and eventually must leave Earth to do battle with the main villain of the arc, a merciless tyrant named Frieza.

Along the way Goku becomes rivals ("frenemies" might be a more accurate description) with the character who is the most compelling and interesting of the entire series: Vegeta, the Crown Prince of the Saiyans, the alien race which he and Goku (Saiyan name "Kakarot") are a part of. Frieza, sadistic and ruthless, becomes the common enemy: he blew up the Saiyan planet, killed Goku's father (a would-be revolutionary who Goku never knew), and wiped out practically the entire Saiyan race. Goku and Vegeta are the only living pure-blood Saiyans left (although there was this guy).

So Frieza's the ultimate Big Bad who kept Vegeta subjugated under his boot, delivering deep psychological and emotional trauma throughout his life. Meanwhile Goku doesn't even know who this guy is; he's only heard about him. Then as you get deeper into the arc you start to feel that Vegeta is the one destined to take revenge, since he has the more personal stakes.

But it is Goku, his hated rival, who defeats Frieza after spontaneously becoming a "Super Saiyan," a super-powered state of being that the Saiyan race can access but hasn't seen in thousands of years. Naturally, as the Crown Prince, Vegeta thought this was his destiny, and that with it he'd be the one to avenge his people. But it didn't happen that way.

Vegeta spends the majority of not just the arc but the series as a whole constantly wrestling with failure, inadequacy, and the feeling of always being in his rival's shadow. Despite that Vegeta is undoubtedly more intelligent and the better tactician, his (considerable) natural fighting talent doesn't equal Goku's, and it's just one humiliation after another.

The series takes a twist when it's revealed that Frieza survived his battle with Goku (who didn't actually kill him) and has himself rebuilt as a cyborg on his way to attack Goku's home planet of Earth. Although Vegeta has since been on Earth chilling with all the other good guys from Z, Goku has not returned from space yet. And it is spelled out that Frieza with his cyborg upgrades is considerably stronger than he was before. We're led to believe that without Goku everyone is toast.

Then Vegeta is dealt what seems to be another humiliation when some random guy with a sword shows up, turns Super Saiyan in front of everybody, and kills Frieza in two moves.

We later learn that this random guy is actually Trunks, Vegeta's half-Saiyan son who time-traveled from the future. Yeah, it can get just as crazy as American superhero comics.

(*In my head-canon Dragon Ball Super doesn't exist, so don't even bother bringing it up.)

Okay, where am I going with this?

After Michigan won the Rose Bowl I started revisiting a lot of what the various preview magazines had to say about Michigan in the pre-season. One of the annual college sports magazines I begrudgingly enjoy is Lindy's, and although their college football preview is an amalgamation of team-specific writers contributing from all over, if you've ever picked up a copy you catch on pretty quick that the editorial staff has a rather shameless bias towards teams in the South—SEC first, then the Big XII and the ACC, in that order—and the only Big Ten program worthy of respect is the Buckeyes.

They almost always put Ohio State over Michigan regardless of roster makeup or any other data like recent history or returning production, but I was surprised to find that in their pre-season rankings for 2023 they listed Michigan at No. 2. Of course, Lindy's editors were quite confident that Georgia, their No. 1, would comfortably three-peat as national champions. But in their take on Michigan, this was what they said:

Harbaugh has made Michigan the king of the Big Ten, has his foot on the neck of Ohio State, and has established this program as an annual playoff contender. Life is good in Ann Arbor. What remains is for him to achieve the one thing that eluded Bo: a national championship.

Now obviously they didn't say that Michigan was going to win the national championship by any stretch, but at the time I found it surprising that they outright acknowledged Michigan's contender status, and in looking back, it was strangely prophetic the way they called attention to Jim Harbaugh's connection to Bo Schembechler.

It really got me thinking. Anyone who reads even a little bit on Michigan football history knows the plain truth that Bo Schembechler, despite his 194-48-5 record at Michigan, including 13 Big Ten titles, never actually won a national championship. He defeated multiple coaches multiple times who had, but he remains one of the greatest football coaches of all time who never won one himself.

Our rivals love to harp on this. Some can't understand why Michigan would ever revere a coach who never achieved college football's ultimate prize. Sure, they'd say, Bo Schembechler was decent as far as coaches go, maybe even better than most, but if his teams never won a title, how can Michigan fans, alumni, and former players possibly consider him to be the best coach of all time, as many of them claim he is?

If you're a Michigan person the answer isn't difficult to grasp. Putting aside the way that national titles were determined in Schembechler's time versus how they are now, everyone in Michigan circles knows that the reason why Bo is so revered is because of what he established, what he set in motion, the culture of toughness and physicality, and ultimately the threat of Michigan to any opponent they'd face. Like a heavyweight boxer who might not have actually won a title but always bloodied up whichever poor sap stepped into the ring with them, there was an intimidation factor with Michigan under Schembechler which accompanied and possibly even matched its prestige academically—something our rivals knew but hated to admit.

So, title or no title, Michigan was going to whup your ass. That was Bo Schembechler's attitude. And it was infectious.

But, much like Marty Schottenheimer or Jim Mora Sr., outstanding coaches at the NFL level who never won a championship, it remains one of the great tragedies in sports lore that one of college football's finest coaches didn't achieve a national title to add to Michigan's collection, though there were years when Bo's teams were good enough and awfully close to doing so. (They probably should have claimed at least one anyway.)

Jim Harbaugh was one of Bo Schembechler's iconic quarterbacks—some may even argue that he is the most iconic—but despite all of his achievements as a player, he never won a national championship. He never won a Super Bowl as an NFL quarterback, either—nor as an NFL coach. Similarly to Bo, Harbaugh had been brilliant and yet despite all of this he came close, oh so close, to reaching the mountaintop.

The parallels between the two men were unmistakable. The attitude, the philosophy, the temper tantrums, the competitive spirit, the poetic quirkiness. The winning a lot but never winning it all. However, now their paths seem to have diverged. Jim Harbaugh has done what Bo historically never did: he finally won a national championship.

Yet, in a way, it is Bo's championship, too. It is ultimately his victory.

There is a strange relationship between coach and quarterback. J.J. McCarthy pointed this out before the final game against Washington, and it was a point he'd made a year ago:

Harbaugh says that McCarthy reminds him of a "young Jimmy Harbaugh." There are certainly parallels—the two are both spirited individuals who love football, both have played quarterback for the University of Michigan, and both a dual-threat at QB.

A common bond, the same goals, same vision, have McCarthy and Harbaugh meshing well. On the Rich Eisen Show, McCarthy detailed the dynamic between teacher and pupil.

"It's definitely like a father-son relationship," McCarthy said. "He treats every single player like his own. It's a little bit special when it's the quarterback. He played here, in the same shoes and everything like that."

We see this all the time across different levels of football. Because the quarterback is often so integral to the success of the team, and thereby the success of the head coach, their relationship is different, generally-speaking, from players at other positions. How many times have we seen a quarterback and a coach have immense success together either because they have similar personalities or their personalities mesh?

But of course, as any football player will tell you, it isn't just limited to the quarterback. Almost every player feels a special bond to the head coach, because he's usually a big part of their lives, and how they are shaped as men.

It is truly like a father and his son.

When you have kids, your attitude on life changes. As you get older you start to think less about the success and achievements you've had yourself, and more on the success and achievements your children are having or will have. You put aside your own ambitions to help them. And strangely, in a way, their ambitions become yours. Their successes become yours.

And I think back to Dragon Ball, at the time Vegeta believed he was a failure because he wasn't the one who avenged his people by killing the tyrant who decimated them.

But he didn't realize that it was his son who did.

As a child Vegeta listened to his father vow that Frieza would die at the hands of someone from their bloodline, a promise that Vegeta himself continued to voice as he reached adulthood. And you know what? It turned out to be true.

I just think that's the coolest f**king thing ever.

Jim Harbaugh is as much Bo Schembechler's son as he is Jack Harbaugh's. And this championship, this ultimate achievement, belongs to Bo as much as it does to Jim. Bo didn't win a title himself, but his son did.

The apprentice of a football coach is the son. J.J. McCarthy is Jim Harbaugh's. Jim didn't win a championship as a quarterback, but his apprentice did. His son did.

Blake Corum is Mike Hart's. Hart never beat Ohio State as a player but he trained someone who did it three straight times. Hart who certainly had dreams of winning a national championship at Michigan now saw his apprentice score the winning touchdown in both the Rose Bowl and the national championship.

This is the father's victory. It has been achieved by the son.

That's what this national championship means.

Go Blue.