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The Michigan Wolverines’ meaningful month of November football continued this past Saturday with a 24-22 win at Wrigley Field in Chicago against the Northwestern Wildcats.
The win kept the Wolverines’ slim Big Ten title hopes alive (despite only having just one conference loss to date) with two games left in the regular season. Of course, it could come down to Week 14, Thanksgiving weekend, when it hosts the Ohio State Buckeyes in Ann Arbor. The Buckeyes are on the doorstep of an undefeated season, but the Wolverines have done them in the last few seasons to gain an upper hand in the rivalry known as “The Game.”
The Wolverines’ four-game winning streak since a loss to the USC Trojans could serve as validation that their playoff fate is alive and well. Fox Sports’ Michael Cohen released his weekly conference rankings Monday. In review of all 18 programs, Cohen placed the Wolverines at No. 5. They trailed only the four likely Big Ten College Football Playoff contenders, should the Wolverines falter again – USC Trojans (No. 4), Oregon Ducks (No. 3), Indiana Hoosiers (No. 2), and Buckeyes (No. 1) to round out the week.
Cohen wrote he was pleased overall with the Wolverines’ resilience despite surrendering five turnovers and nearly letting Northwestern not give Bryce Underwood the ball back had it not been for poor clock management by the Wildcats’ offense. He did suggest, though, that giving a team like Northwestern too many chances won’t boil over well in the next several weeks.
“The Wolverines became just the second team in the last five years to finish minus-5 in turnover margin and still win the game, a distinction that had only belonged to 2024 SMU (minus-6 vs. Duke) prior to the comedy of errors at Wrigley Field,” Cohen wrote.
Cohen was blunt in the rest of his assessment, arguing the Wildcats did enough to win but good teams seem to find a way to finish.
Nonetheless, the Wolverines’ two remaining games can’t be letdowns if they’re expected to get into the College Football Playoff.
It begins with the Maryland Terrapins this Saturday (4 p.m. ET, Big Ten Network). They need to win out to become eligible for a bowl game, dropping six in a row after beginning the season 4-0.
For now, only time will tell.
Zain Bando is a freelance writer for The Sporting News. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Over the years, Bando has written about various beats surrounding Illinois, Northwestern, and Kansas State Athletics but sticks to the Big Ten as his primary expertise. Outside of collegiate reporting, Bando covers MMA and boxing for MMA Knockout On Sports Illustrated and hosts/co-hosts two podcasts as part of the Empty The Bench Podcast Network – Bando’s Breakdowns and The MMA Outsiders, which air weekly on YouTube and are distributed on all podcast platforms Wednesday nights and Friday afternoons. Bando is a Chicago Suburban native and a member of the FWAA and USBWA, continuing to hone his professional skills as a sports journalist and media personality. Since June 2019, Bando’s byline has been featured in numerous media outlets, including MSN, Yardbarker, Deadspin, FanSided, BJPenn.com, Bridge Media Network (Sports News Highlights), Mike Farrell Sports, Reuters, and more. When Bando is not writing, he binges on old UFC fights, spends time with family and friends, memorizes every Super Bowl, and manifests all the places he still has to travel to (even while bringing his laptop).