Michigan Wolverines football players voted for team captains, and the results were shared with the team Thursday afternoon. Junior wide receiver Ronnie Bell, junior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, redshirt junior linebacker Josh Ross and sixth-year senior center Andrew Vastardis will serve as the squad's primary leaders.
The names were read off, and each player went up to the front of the room to address their team in what was an emotional moment, different from last year — for Hutchinson, Ross and Vastardis, three of Michigan's seven captains in 2020 — when the coaches handpicked the captains.
"It feels great," Ross said. "This feeling is definitely a little bit different. The players didn’t vote; the coaches picked … but enough talk about last year. Enough of last year, enough talk about everything. It’s time to do. But the feeling of getting voted by my teammates as a leader, as a guy to look to, to motivate, to lead … to be that guy, it’s an emotional feeling."
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"It’s a great honor," Bell said. "It means a lot. It didn’t necessarily hit me, I guess, on how much it meant until they said I was a captain. It was a shock of how much it really does mean."
"It’s surreal," Hutchinson added. "Just being in that room, and looking back at my freshman year, seeing those guys walk up and give their little speech to the team, it’s just surreal, thinking about it. My dad [former Michigan defensive lineman Chris Hutchinson] was in the same shoes 20, 30 years ago at Michigan, whenever it was. It’s just crazy. I’m kind of speechless right now. I don’t know that to say."
"It’s a good story to look at it, but it’s a team game, and me being here for six years, I’ve seen a lot of guys grow up with me and a lot of guys just starting their journeys," Vastardis said. "To be someone that this team respects and looks up to like that, it means the world to me.
"We’ve been bleeding, sweating. We’ve had tough times, we’ve had good times. But always coming in, every day, and playing for the man next to you, I think that’s what’s put me in that position, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do and that’s what I’m going to bring out of everybody. It is truly the greatest honor I’ve ever received."
All four have been leaders throughout the offseason, so a lot of the leadership duties will be a continuation of what they've already been doing. But they still say being a captain is an added responsibility, and that they'll take more onus of how the team performs and carries itself.
"But that responsibility doesn’t change," Hutchinson was quick to note. "I’ve been leading in all kinds of different ways this offseason, this camp. Now that I have the title, it doesn’t really change much. I’ll still keeping doing what I do, but you have to live up to that captain standard. "
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