Michigan reaction to Alabama playoff matchup says more than its words

LOS ANGELES — If Michigan loses the College Football Playoff semifinal to Alabama on Monday, the recriminations will be swift and severe. Connor Stalions and sign-stealing. Jim Harbaugh’s constant dalliances with the NFL and incomplete contract negotiations with Michigan. The general weakness of the Big Ten. All of it will all be on the table as the reason the No. 1 Wolverines once again couldn’t get it done in the CFP. 

I’ll be thinking about a 30-second video clip. 

To be honest, I’ve already been thinking about it — a lot. Maybe way too much. But my eyes can’t unsee what happened on Dec. 3 when an ESPN reporter captured the reaction from Michigan’s watch party when the Wolverines learned Alabama — not Florida State — would be their opponent in the Rose Bowl. 

You’ve probably seen the video by now. The first few seconds — a gasp, followed by a groan and then stunned semi-silence — was reminiscent of a crowd at a Broadway play learning the star performer was taking the night off. Or maybe an airline pilot telling 200 people that the flight had been cancelled. Either way, I’ve seen people get more excited opening letters from the IRS.

My first thought, and the one I just can’t shake as this titanic Rose Bowl approaches: Michigan doesn’t want Bama. 

“It was funny — real funny,” Alabama receiver Isaiah Bond said. “You see people’s true emotions.” 

Michigan players, of course, say we have this all wrong. They’re aware of the video. They know how it’s been interpreted. They say it was simply a matter of collective surprise that the CFP selection committee snubbed 13-0 Florida State in favor of 12-1 Alabama.  

“It’s funny that I keep hearing everybody say we’re scared because we got ‘Bama, and it was more like the shock of not seeing an undefeated Power Five team get picked,” Michigan linebacker Michael Barrett said. “It wasn’t really like fear, never that, of any team.”

Riiiiiiiiight. 

Listen, maybe Barrett is telling the truth. But the Wolverines sure didn’t do a very good job in the moment of showing — to use Harbaugh’s pet phrase — an enthusiasm unknown to mankind when they learned all their hard work to get the No. 1 seed had landed them a matchup against the most successful college football program of the modern era rather than a Florida State team whose starting quarterback broke his leg.

Was it really just shock? Or was it disappointment, too? 

Because if it’s the latter, Michigan is in trouble on Monday. Big, big trouble. There are only two kinds of teams that play Alabama: Those who truly want the challenge and those who fake it while knowing they’re about to get run over by an 18-wheeler. 

The dichotomy for Michigan is clear.

All season, it has acted, talked and played like a bully that wants all the smoke. After two Harbaugh suspensions and a month of accusations that its unbeaten record was at least in part gained through illegal sign-stealing, it was Michigan vs. Everybody, shutting up the critics one win at a time. 

But there’s also the reality of Michigan’s previous two forays into the College Football Playoff, neither of which have gone very well. Against Georgia two years ago, there wasn’t a single second of the game in which Michigan looked like it belonged on the same field. 

This year, the Wolverines are better. They’re older. They have a better understanding of what it takes to beat an SEC powerhouse in the semifinals. 

And that might be exactly the problem. 

“It’s an opportunity to play against the college football team over the last 15 years,” Michigan defensive coordinator Jesse Minter said. “The team that’s won all those national titles and been in these situations a bunch. I think for us, for our guys, the disappointment creates a mindset that this is the opportunity you want, and let’s embrace it.” 

Did you see anyone with a big maize ‘M’ on their chest embracing it when Michigan learned who it was playing in this game? 

Hey, sometimes short videos clips are unfair. They don’t tell the whole story. But we all saw what we saw in that moment. Of course the Wolverines would rather have played Florida State, which kind of justifies why the CFP committee made the right choice in the first place. 

“Who wouldn’t want to play a team who was missing their starting quarterback for a chance to go to a national championship game?” Barrett acknowledged. “I feel like that’s kind of what that shock was — like, ‘Oh, dang,’ we probably could have caught them slipping or whatever. At the end of the day, we’re here now. We have who we have, and we’re about to go handle business.”

Sorry, but Michigan wasn’t going to get off the hook that easily. You can’t backdoor your way into a national title, and in this era, that usually means beating Alabama. 

Maybe it’s a coincidence and maybe it’s not, but it is notable that the program with the most playoff success against Alabama over the last decade was led by former Alabama player and assistant coach Dabo Swinney. 

He got the whole Alabama aura. He understood it and respected it, but he coached his Clemson players in a way that made them expressly unafraid of it when they faced Alabama for the national title in 2015, 2016 and 2018 — winning two of those matchups.

Clemson truly relished that stage. Not everybody does.

But Michigan’s coaching staff understands it’s an issue, an existential hurdle that must be overcome to reach the top of the sport.

This season, Harbaugh instituted a “Beat Georgia” period of practice that mostly amounts to a toughness drill where you have to run the ball even though the other team knows you’re going to run it and you have to stop the run even though you’re outnumbered at the line of scrimmage.

Obviously, Michigan didn’t end up playing Georgia, but it was a clear nod to the idea that the Wolverines would likely play a game at some point that required them to be even more physical and effective in the trenches than they’ve been against Ohio State. It’s a drill they’ve been doing all season expressly for a game like this. 

“Four years ago, it probably would have been called the ‘Beat Alabama’ drill, and just because Georgia had won the last two (national championships) that was the team,” Minter said. “I sort of put those two together. They’re kind of built from the same cloth, they play the same style and you know what you’re going to get when you play one of those teams.”

When that script “A” flashed up on the television opposite Michigan in the bracket on Dec. 3, they knew exactly what kind of game they’d be in for — for better or worse.

“It was kind of just like an ‘Ahh’ moment,” Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham said. “Everyone in the room really knew what was going on.”

Let’s just say Michigan’s attempts to spin that video were less convincing than its win over Ohio State. In both cases, actually beating Alabama is going to take much more than it’s shown thus far.