Before this year, Michigan football has appeared in the preseason Associated Press rankings all but nine times since it moved from a top 10 to a top 20 list in 1968 (it was upped to a top 25 in 1989).

In those nine years, however, the Wolverines have finished the season ranked more times than not (five occurrences), showing they’ve exceeded low expectations in the past and lending hope to the idea that they can do it again in 2021.

Michigan smashed expectations in 1985. Coming off a 6-6 season, the Wolverines’ worst under legendary head man Bo Schembechler, Jim Harbaugh, then the team’s quarterback, helped lead his squad to a 10-1-1 campaign, which included a triumph over Ohio State and Fiesta Bowl win over Nebraska.

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In fact, Harbaugh has been a part of two seasons in which the Maize and Blue began unranked but finished listed among the nation’s best, albeit in a different role. In his first year as head coach in 2015, Harbaugh led a resurgence in Ann Arbor, taking the five-win team he inherited and winning 10 games, including a blowout victory over Florida in the Citrus Bowl.

Perhaps the most famous and still talked about season in program history in which the team didn’t win the national championship is 1969, Schembechler’s first on the job. The Wolverines finished with an 8-3 mark and No. 9 ranking, but made the Rose Bowl after mounting a huge upset win over top-ranked Ohio State, which hadn’t lost a contest in nearly two full seasons.

The Maize and Blue wound up checking in at No. 12 to conclude the 2011 and 1968 seasons — with the former being head coach Brady Hoke’s first year on the job and an 11-win campaign and the latter being head man Bump Elliott’s final year (U-M posted an 8-2 record) — while they finished unranked in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2014.

Here is a look at every season since 1968 that Michigan began the year unranked.

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