What ESPN's Program Stability Rankings Say About Michigan Football

ESPN.com staff writer Bill Connelly put together his rankings of the most stable college football programs heading into the 2021 season and, as you might expect with Michigan coming off a 2-4 season, the Wolverines sit in the middle of the pack at No. 60 (out of the 130 teams in the sport), which is considered in the tier of "stable enough."

"Stability atop your team's coaching staff can create a reliable identity," Connelly explained. "Stability on your two-deep in a given year can give you a higher floor and a greater margin for error. Stability isn't the same as quality, but it can certainly help."

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First, let's dig into Connelly's method of determining stability within a program.

He used three different categories — coaching stability (up to 20 points), roster stability (up to 20 points) and performance stability (up to 10 points) — and assigned point values for each.

Here are his definitions of each category:

1. Coaching stability: "Points will be awarded according to three factors: how long your current coach has been on the job, how many head coaches you've had over the past five years (so, 2017-21, not including late-year interims) and how many coordinators you've had to replace this offseason. Air Force, Clemson, Iowa, MTSU, Navy, Oklahoma State, Stanford and Utah get the full 20 points in this category."

2. Roster stability: "This will be based on two factors: your returning production averages (updated since February's piece on the topic) and the number of players you've lost to the transfer portal since the start of last season*. The former points directly at the value of who you've got returning, while the latter hints at a program's overall culture and stability. Teams like Wisconsin (19.2 points), Toledo (19.1) and Miami (18.1) lead the way in this category, while Tennessee (0.7), WKU (1.5) and Notre Dame (1.7) bring up the rear."

3. Performance stability: "This category is a bit blurrier. It asks three general questions:

"(1) How well have you done recently? We'll derive this from your five-year average SP+ rating.

"(2) How consistent have you been? We'll use the standard deviation of your last five years of SP+ for this.

"(3) How many games did you play last year? This one is 2021-specific, obviously.

"All three of these questions hint at how reliable your output is and how easy it might be to predict how you're going to play this year. Recent dominant programs like Alabama (9.8), Clemson (9.7) and Oklahoma (9.5) get the most points here, while ODU (0.8, no games last season), UMass (0.9) and BGSU (1.6) are at the bottom."

The Wolverines were awarded 27.9 overall points (14.5 coach stability, 6.5 roster stability, 6.9 performance stability).

It may be surprising that coaching stability received the highest score, but there hasn't been any head-coaching turnover in Ann Arbor over the last five years and, although Jim Harbaugh, who is entering his seventh year on the job, took a pay cut this offseason, he did sign an extension through the 2025 season. The Wolverines did replace one coordinator this offseason — tabbing Mike Macdonald as defensive coordinator after dismissing Don Brown — but that's the only mark against them in the coaching category.

When taking a look at roster stability, it makes sense that the Maize and Blue are regarded as well below average with 6.5 points out of a possible 20, considering the 15 departures to the transfer portal since the end of last season and the fact that they return 79 percent of their production from 2020, which checks in as the 49th-most in the country.

Heading into one of the volatile and difficult to predict seasons in Michigan football history, a performance stability of 6.9 points out of 10 may be surprising. However, it's important to remember that the Wolverines have averaged a SP+ ranking of 11.6 over the last five years with a low rank of 30th (2020). The one big knock here is that Michigan played only six games last season.

Here is a look at where each Big Ten team checked in on Connelly's rankings:

4. Wisconsin

12. Iowa

25. Penn State

31. Minnesota

35. Indiana

38. Northwestern

58. Ohio State

60. Michigan

66. Purdue

69. Rutgers

85. Nebraska

99. Michigan State

103. Maryland

109. Illinois

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