By The Numbers: The Uniqueness & Oddities Of U-M's 2020 Football Season
The cancellation of the Michigan Wolverines football's 'Champions Week' game against Iowa that was originally slated for this past Saturday mercifully put a bow on the Maize and Blue's 2020 season.
This year was one of the most unique campaigns in the history of U-M football (a tradition that dates back to 1879), but unfortunately it was primarily for all the wrong reasons.
The Wolverines stumbled to a 2-4 record in a year it was originally expected to play eight regular-season games plus the aforementioned 'Champions Week' contest, though cancellations of the Maryland, Ohio State and Iowa matchups threw a wrench into those plans.
It wouldn't be fair to see where this season stacks up all-time strictly from a wins perspective, seeing as how the number of games Michigan has played in a given year has varied tremendously throughout its history.
We can rank it from a winning percentage standpoint, however, and the results are unsurprisingly not favorable. This season's winning percentage of 33.3 was tied with the 1-2 campaign in 1889 as the seventh worst in school history, among years in which U-M played at least one game (it didn't take the field at all in 1882).
Of the six seasons in school history that had worst winning percentages than 2020, three of them occurred in 1936 or earlier.
| Year | Record | Winning Percentage | Head Coach |
|---|---|---|---|
|
1. 1881 |
0-3 |
0 |
No Coach |
|
T-2. 1934 |
1-7 |
12.5 |
Harry Kipke |
|
T-2. 1936 |
1-7 |
12.5 |
Harry Kipke |
|
T-4. 1958 |
2-6-1 |
22.2 |
Bennie Oosterbaan |
|
T-4. 1962 |
2-7 |
22.2 |
Bump Elliott |
|
6. 2008 |
3-9 |
25 |
Rich Rodriguez |
|
T-7. 1889 |
1-2 |
33.3 |
No Coach |
|
T-7. 2020 |
2-4 |
33.3 |
Jim Harbaugh |
Another aspect that made the 2020 campaign so unique was the fact that Michigan only played six games. The six contests were the fewest U-M had played in a single year since 1918 when it only took the field five times.
Counting 2020, there have now only been 16 seasons in which the Wolverines have played six games or fewer since the program's inception in 1879. Of those 16, 12 occurred in 1890 or earlier.
The 2020, 1910 and 1907 seasons have been the only ones where U-M played exactly six games, while the club took the field five times in 1918, 1906, 1890, 1887 and 1883. The 1880 campaign was the only one ever at Michigan where the team only competed in one game.
| Year | Number of Games Played | Record | Head Coach |
|---|---|---|---|
|
2020 |
6 |
2-4 |
Jim Harbaugh |
|
1918 |
5 |
5-0 |
Fielding Yost |
|
1910 |
6 |
3-0-3 |
Fielding Yost |
|
1907 |
6 |
5-1 |
Fielding Yost |
|
1906 |
5 |
4-1 |
Fielding Yost |
|
1890 |
5 |
4-1 |
No Coach |
|
1889 |
3 |
1-2 |
No Coach |
|
1888 |
3 |
2-1 |
No Coach |
|
1887 |
5 |
5-0 |
No Coach |
|
1886 |
2 |
2-0 |
No Coach |
|
1885 |
3 |
3-0 |
No Coach |
|
1884 |
2 |
2-0 |
No Coach |
|
1883 |
5 |
2-3 |
No Coach |
|
1882 |
0 |
0-0 |
No Coach |
|
1881 |
3 |
0-3 |
No Coach |
|
1880 |
1 |
1-0 |
No Coach |
|
1879 |
2 |
1-0-1 |
No Coach |
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