With spring ball now wrapped up around the country, ESPN released its post-spring college football top-25 this morning, and placed Michigan at No. 7.
According to their list, five of U-M's 12 2019 opponents cracked the top-25, with Ohio State leading the way at No. 5, Notre Dame at No. 6, Penn State at No. 13, Wisconsin at No. 21 and Iowa at No. 23.
Fortunately for Michigan, three of those five games will occur inside The Big House, with Wisconsin on Sept. 21 and Penn State on Oct. 19 being the lone exceptions.
"The expectations are high for Michigan, returning most of its offense, including quarterback Shea Patterson," ESPN's Tom VanHaaren wrote for the Maize and Blue's writeup.
"Jim Harbaugh has handed the offense over to new coordinator Josh Gattis. Through the short time they've been together, Patterson and backup quarterback Dylan McCaffrey have raved about the energy level from Gattis and what the new offense will bring.
"If it doesn't end with a conference championship or playoff berth, there will be quite a bit of grumbling around Ann Arbor."
VanHaaren is spot on with his assessment, especially the last sentence.
With a coaching change at Ohio State and the Wolverines returning 13 of 22 starters from last year's club, most think the Big Ten should be Michigan's to win in 2019.
Whether or not it will come in as the favorite in August's AP Poll remains to be seen, but it seems unanimous it'll at least be ranked inside the nation's top-10.
With that in mind, we've taken a look back at the 10 most recent times the Wolverines have entered a campaign ranked inside the top-10, and how they fared in each of those seasons.
At first glance, the table above likely yields mixed results.
On one hand, the Maize and Blue have finished the season lower than where they came in on nine of the 10 instances, with 1999 being the lone exception (entered at No. 8 and finished No. 5).
That obviously creates a negative narrative on the years where U-M has entered the season highly ranked, despite the fact it creates an incredibly small window of opportunity to actually finish higher than where you began, especially when you come in as high as No. 4 or No. 5, etc.
On a positive note, however, Michigan has concluded nine of the 10 campaigns on the table above in the final AP Poll (2005 being the exclusion), and actually inside the top-14 in seven of them.
Similarly, four of the aforementioned seasons have ended with a Big Ten title, including four of the five instances from 1998 through 2004.
U-M's conference title drought has obviously been most prominent over the last 15 years, with the team failing to win the league each of the last four times it entered ranked in the top-10 — 2005, 2007, 2012 and 2016.
Under current head coach Jim Harbaugh (and former head man Lloyd Carr in 2007, at least), there has been one common denominator standing in the way of the conference crown — Ohio State.
A win over the Buckeyes in Carr's final year of 2007 would have given U-M the outright Big Ten title, while victories over OSU for Harbaugh's squads in both 2016 and 2018 would have at least sent the Wolverines to the Big Ten Championship Game (where they would have faced Wisconsin and Northwestern, respectively).
Again, perhaps a changing of the guard in Columbus (Ryan Day has replaced Urban Meyer) will now give the Maize and Blue an easier path to the league championship, but it will still likely come down to simply beating the Buckeyes more often than not.
Case in point: Michigan went on to win the Big Ten in three (2003, 2000 and 1997) of the last five seasons it beat Ohio State.
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