Michigan 19, Alabama 13: Culture win
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I spent the weeks leading up to this year’s ReliaQuest Bowl reminding people how little there was to actually play for in the game. Whether in newsletters, Q&As or radio appearances, I said over and over again that the true value coming from Michigan’s bowl game against Alabama came from the 15 additional practices it unlocked for the young players on this roster — including a whole slew of incoming freshmen that enrolled after signing with Michigan in December.
So in the aftermath of Michigan’s second straight win as a multiple TD underdog, this one in the form of a shocking 19-13 win over Alabama on Tuesday afternoon, I’m not going to sit here and lie to you.
I’m not going to flip a switch and pretend this was the most important game in the world now that Michigan ended up winning it. Because that’s not true.
I’m not going to reveal that my talking down of this game was simply a ploy to manage expectations, and that the result of this game really was comparable to some of Michigan’s big regular season matchups this year. Because that’s also not true.
But I absolutely will use the fact that there really was nothing to play for as a sign of positive things with this program — both in the present and the future.
Michigan beating Alabama with a bunch of backups was great. Being able to boast multiple wins over one of the biggest brands in college football in the same calendar year is a wonderful skin on the wall. The most tangible and promising thing I take away from the ReliaQuest Bowl experience, though, are positive vibes about this team, the program at large and the culture that is a tenet at its core — a cornerstone that explains past success and allows me to sleep well knowing that will extend into future seasons and withstand coaching changes.
Because in hindsight, this being a game that Michigan had absolutely nothing to play for ended up being a feature, not a bug. And the Wolverines passed the “football culture test” with flying colors.
With Michigan vs. Alabama, the game pitting a team with a ton of opt outs against a team that had just about everyone playing in an effort to exorcise demons from a Jan. 1 loss, there ended up being a clear difference in the juice department between the two schools — just not in the direction that made the most sense on paper.
Alabama had future first-round draft pick QB Jalen Milroe playing QB, going up against a defensive line whose trio of future first rounders were all in street clothes. The Tide’s all-world freshman WR Ryan Williams was suited up, going up against a secondary without its All-American CB Will Johnson. And the Tide defense didn’t have to prepare for Michigan’s top pass-catcher or either of its top two running backs. In fact, the top available Michigan WR had 134 yards receiving all season long. And its top running back had 48 yards rushing all season long.
This was a mismatch of epic proportions on paper. And it was playing out that way in Las Vegas, too. By the time the game kicked off, Alabama had shifted to a 16.5-point favorite — an unheard of spread when it comes to bowl season, since most matchups typically pit teams with similar records against each other. If Michigan won, it would be the second-biggest upset in terms of point spread in the history of bowl games.
Once the game started, that mismatch continued out onto the field, too. But in the opposite direction that sharp money, pundits and yours truly thought it would go.
As things shifted from paper to the gridiron, it was the Michigan sideline that was littered with players holding up chairs, waving them over their heads and dancing in the rain as a downpour appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It felt like a throwback to the 2021 and 2022 teams that looked to “steal the juice” from opponents outside of Michigan Stadium — like doing Wisconsin’s Jump Around, using Nebraska’s Thunderstruck to fuel a comeback during your first deficit of the season or flipping Iowa’s pink locker rooms into a positive.
Alabama didn’t look like the team with the revenge storyline. It looked like a deer in headlights. Through one quarter of play, Alabama had five drives and zero points. Those five drives ended up yielding one punt, one turnover on downs, two fumbles and one interception. And a grand total of -1 yard of offense.
On the flip side, Michigan didn’t look like the team with nothing to play for. It looked like an energized bunch of guys playing for college football’s ultimate prize, when it actuality, it’s a team that just loves to play football. In other words, it looked like a peak Jim Harbaugh team — one rich in culture that’s in great shape going forward. When it comes to compliments I can pay a team in the current college football landscape, that’s about as good as it gets.
Here’s what I wrote in the middle of the 2021 season when I could feel the tide turning in a positive direction for both Jim Harbaugh and the program as a whole:
I no longer question the culture of the Michigan program. One year removed from “will to win” being a front-of-mind concern with this team, those types of intangibles are now considered a positive, not a negative, with this team. There’s excellent veteran leadership from guys like Aidan Hutchinson, Hassan Haskins, Josh Ross, Brad Hawkins and Andrew Vastardis, just to name a few. There’s new blood in the coaching staff that’s all pulling in the same direction, adding a unified voice and renewed energy to a staff that was getting stale and complacent. As Jim Harbaugh laid out in a great SI feature by Pat Forde earlier this week, Michigan is back to having fun, and that’s caused by having football players who *gasp* love playing football — and coaches who love coaching football.
Sound familiar? It should. Because that 2021 culture sure looks, sounds and feels a lot like the current one within Schembechler Hall.
A few months ago when Michigan was in the middle of a five-game stretch where it lost four of the games and any talk of late-season success sounded more like a sarcastic punchline than as aspiration, this type of culture seemed like a pipe dream.
Now, it’s a reality.
Let’s dive deeper into Michigan’s big bowl win below the paywall jump, including another defensive masterclass, some breakout performances and a look ahead to what’s next now that Michigan’s 2024 season is officially over. 👇