Michigan Football: Media Days Roundtable Gets Blunt On U-M

Big Ten football media days allowed TheWolverine.com to pull together a strong roundtable. Here’s what it had to say about Michigan.

The panel includes John Bacon, author of several books on Michigan football; Howard Griffith, Big Ten Network commentator; Nick Baumgardner, Michigan beat writer for the Detroit Free Press; and Jon Jansen, former U-M All-American and new communications specialist for the Michigan athletic department.

We focused on three questions central to the expectations and effort regarding Jim Harbaugh’s squad.

Big Ten media picked Michigan fourth in the East Division in a pre-season poll. Is that a shocker to you?

Baumgardner: “No. I voted in the poll, and that’s where I picked them. The way I looked at it was, they lost significantly to Penn State. Penn State has a lot of people back.

“Ohio State is very good. Michigan State, Penn State … it’s just hard to put Michigan ahead of those teams, given what we’ve seen. We can think about what we may see happen, but … I think it’s close, but it’s time to prove. We’re going to stop just projecting things.

“It’s hard to put them higher than that. And it’s also maybe the toughest division in the country.”