While many colleges around the country annually play "cupcake" opponents in their season openers, the Michigan Wolverines' football program has faced a solid mixture of both lighter and formidable foes in game one over the past 20 years.

Saturday's opener against Middle Tennessee State falls into the former category, following debut showdowns with ranked clubs in each of the last two years (a loss versus No. 12 Notre Dame last year and a victory over No. 17 Florida in 2017).

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The Maize and Blue have compiled a 15-5 record in season openers dating back to 1999, including a 2-2 mark under current head man Jim Harbaugh.

Both of Harbaugh's losses were on the road by identical 24-17 scores, with the first coming at the hands of a Utah team that finished 10-3 in 2015, and the second to a Notre Dame squad who went 12-1 and made the College Football Playoff last season.

U-M registered a combined 5-2 record in campaign-opening contests under Harbaugh's predecessors, Brady Hoke (2011-14) and Rich Rodriguez (2008-10), but enjoyed a long string of success in such affairs under former head man Lloyd Carr (1995-2007).

In fact, from 1999-2006, U-M went a perfect 8-0 in season-opening tilts, including notable triumphs over No. 16 Notre Dame in 1999 and No. 11 Washington in 2002.

Carr's victorious stretch was snapped in his final year of 2007, however, with the infamous 34-32 loss to then-Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) foe Appalachian State.

The Wolverine administration showed a tendency to schedule Mid-American Conference (MAC) opponents for U-M's annual first game throughout the initial half of the 2000s, with the Maize and Blue opening up against a MAC club four out of five years from 2000-05 (Washington in 2002 was the lone exception).

Dave Brandon then scheduled a wider range of opponents when he took over as Michigan's director of athletics in 2010, with the Wolverines kicking off their campaigns against teams from four different conferences (Big East, MAC, SEC and Sun Belt) during his five years on the job.

The following is a breakdown of the leagues that U-M has opened up against since 1999:

• MAC — 8 times (Bowling Green in 2000, Miami (Ohio) in 2001 and 2004, Central Michigan in 2003 and 2013, Northern Illinois in 2005, and Western Michigan in 2009 and 2011).

• SEC — 3 (Vanderbilt in 2006, Alabama in 2012, Florida in 2017)

• Independent — 2 (Notre Dame in 1999 and 2018)

• Mountain West — 2 (Utah in 2008, Hawaii in 2016)

• Pac-10/Pac-12 — 2 (Washington in 2002, Utah in 2015)

• Big East — 1 (Connecticut in 2010)

• Conference USA — 1 (Middle Tennessee State in 2019)

• FCS — 1 (Appalachian State in 2007)

• Sun Belt — 1 (Appalachian State in 2014)

0 Quarterbacks in Michigan history who have thrown for at least 2,600 yards and 22 touchdowns in two separate seasons. Those are the exact numbers senior quarterback Shea Patterson posted last year, and Saturday will be his first opportunity to try and become the first U-M signal-caller to ever register those statistics in two different years.

5-1 Is Michigan's all-time record in home night games, with the lone loss occurring to Michigan State (14-10) in 2017. The five victories, meanwhile, were over Notre Dame in 2011 (35-31) and 2013 (41-30), Penn State in 2014 (18-13), Minnesota in 2017 (33-10) and Wisconsin in 2018 (38-13). The Maize and Blue have played 57 night contests all time, and have posted a 32-25 record in those affairs. U-M's first-ever showdown under the lights was a 14-0 victory over Marquette in 1944.

7 Is where Michigan is ranked in the AP poll entering the 2019 campaign, marking its highest preseason mark since also landing at No. 7 in Harbaugh's second year of 2016. The last time the Maize and Blue came into a season ranked higher was when they debuted at No. 5 in 2007.

10-1-1 Is U-M's all-time record against teams from the state of Tennessee: 10-0-1 against Vanderbilt and 0-1 versus Tennessee.

10-2 Mark for Harbaugh against regular-season non-conference opponents during his time at Michigan, with the two setbacks occurring at Utah (24-17) in 2015 and at Notre Dame (also 24-17) last season.

50 Percent chance of precipitation Saturday night in Ann Arbor (according to weather.com), along with a projected low of 55 degrees and maximum wind gusts of just eight miles-per-hour.

113-23-3 Is U-M's record in season-opening contests, including a 96-15-2 mark in openers that have occurred in Ann Arbor.

140th Season of Michigan football in 2019, making it the sixth-oldest program in the nation. The Wolverines played their first game on May 30, 1879, and defeated Racine 1-0 in Chicago. The only five schools who have been playing football longer than U-M are Princeton (150 years), Rutgers (150), Yale (147), Harvard (145) and Pennsylvania (143).

2003 Was the last time the Maize and Blue squared off with an opponent from Conference USA (which is where MTSU currently resides), when they took down Houston, 50-3, on Sept. 6 in The Big House.

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