2022 U-M football fan survey (Part 3): Your biggest concerns with the program and expectations for the upcoming season
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It’s time to cross the finish line when it comes to the 2022 Michigan football fan survey.
Thanks once again to everyone that took part in this year’s survey — the response was far more overwhelming than expected. I ended up closing the polls within two days of its original launch because there were more than 14,000 total votes cast in a 48-hour period after it went live. Because of this, I broke the survey up into three parts when it came to breaking down your answers.
ICYMI, the first two parts are already published:
Part 1: Your thoughts on Michigan’s coaching staff — Jim Harbaugh’s NFL flirtation, offseason moves and more
Now comes the third and final installment, which tackles questions about Michigan’s standing as a program, an outlook on the 2022 season, worries about recruiting/NIL and more.
Let’s get to it.
Question 1: Which of these records do you think Michigan is most likely to have this season?
10-2: 59.3%
11-1: 23.3%
9-3: 13.3%
12-0: 1.9%
8-4: 1.9%
7-5: 0.3%
I have yet to come up with my Super Official Prediction for the 2022 season. But without formally predicting every game, my lean is that I’ll end up landing at 10-2, which is what I voted in this exercise. I’m not surprised that’s where most of you landed, too, but I was surprised with just how many people voted that. With nine different choices, 10-2 still got almost 60% of the total votes. Not surprisingly, one spot up and one spot down from 10-2 got the next two highest totals, with 11-1 getting just shy of 25% total votes and 9-3 getting a little over 10%.
The biggest surprise to me was that less than 5% of all voters expected something outside of 9-11 regular season wins and 1-3 regular season losses. That means very few people think Michigan can run the table. It also means very few people think Michigan will be worse than a ~top 15 team. If the floor really is 9-3 in a season where the Wolverines play at the Horseshoe and have a tough crossover road draw at Kinnick Stadium, not to mention the annual tough division matchups against the likes of Michigan State and Penn State, then that’s not the worst thing in the world. But nobody in the fanbase (myself included), would exactly be thrilled if the floor ends up being the reality, and Michigan follows up a College Football Playoff appearance with a good-not-great season.