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Thursday, July 28, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SPORTS

JAMES COLLER/Daily

Redshirt sophomore linebacker Jabrill Peppers was put on the Nagurski and Thorpe Award preseason watch lists.
Notebook: Harbaugh, Big Ten 

coaches address media in Chicago

By KELLY HALL

Daily Sports Editor

CHICAGO 
— 
Monday, 
six 

coaches took the podium at Big Ten 
Media Days to give their opening 
remarks, but the Wolverines were 
discussed in more than just Michi-
gan coach Jim Harbaugh’s Q&A 
session.

The Michigan football team 

kicks off its conference schedule on 
Sept. 24, when the Nittany Lions 
travel to Michigan Stadium, but 
the competition is already starting 
to heat up.

NO 
RUTGERS 
RIVALRY 

“YET”: After Michigan plucked a 
few prized recruits from the state 
of New Jersey last spring (includ-
ing No. 1 recruit Rashan Gary), Rut-
gers’ and the Wolverines’ fan bases 
butted heads on social media. 

First-year Scarlet Knights coach 

Chris Ash, who served as Ohio 
State’s co-defensive coordinator 
prior to arriving in Piscataway, 
was asked about the fan rivalry 
between the two teams.

“I’ll start by saying there’s no 

rivalry with Michigan yet,” Ash 
said. “They’ve done some things 
that we have not been able to do, 
and I think it’s great when fans get 
a chance in the offseason to talk 
about college football and have 
fun with college football. I have a 
tremendous amount of respect for 
Coach Harbaugh and the job he’s 

done at Michigan and the program 
they’ve had for several years.”

PEPPERS MAKES PREASE-

ASON WATCH LIST: Redshirt 
sophomore linebacker Jabrill Pep-
pers was named on the East Divi-
sion Big Ten Football Preaseason 
Watch List along with Michigan 
State’s Malik McDowelll, Ohio 
State’s J.T. Barrett and Raekwon 
McMillan and Penn State’s Saquon 
Barkley. 

Harbaugh had nothing but good 

things to say about Peppers, listing 
him as a multi-threat player. 

“He can play just about any-

where on a football field and be 
effective,” Harbaugh said. “Put 
him in a corner, put him in a safe-
ty. Put him in a nickel. Put him in 
a linebacker. Ultimately probably 
nickel is his best position. He can 
be a returner of the punts, returner 
of the kickoffs. He could be a gun-
ner. He could be a hold-up guy. 
Offensively probably right now 
could probably be our slot receiver 
and would give De’Veon and all of 
our running backs a run for their 
money to be the best running back 
on the team. Could be a wildcat 
quarterback. Could be an outside 
receiver. Can run all the reverses 
and fly sweeps.

“So I think you get the picture. 

He is a tremendous athlete.”

FITZGERALD REMEMBERS 

SHUTOUT: After leading the 
Wildcats to a 6-2 Big Ten record 

last season, Northwestern coach 
Pat Fitzgerald gave a nod to Michi-
gan, which handed the Wildcats 
one of its two in-conference losses. 
The Wolverines shut out then-No. 
13 Northwestern 38-0 at the Big 
House, resulting in the Wildcats’ 
worst loss of the season. 

“I thought (Michigan) played 

outstanding,” Fitzgerald said on 
Monday. “When you get on the bus 
and you pop the tape on that’s the 
first thing you do as a coach. You 
pop on the tape and you go: ‘We 
should have done A, B, C.’ But wow 
do they do it well. And you tip your 
hat and you move on, get ready for 
the next week.”

CHESSON CHECK-UP: After 

being sidelined in spring practice 
due to a leg injury, fifth-year senior 
wide receiver Jehu Chesson is 
expected to be healthy by the start 
of fall practice, which starts on 
Aug. 8.

Chesson will have some healthy 

competition at the position with 
fifth-year senior Amara Darboh, 
who Harbaugh now believes is 
Michigan’s top receiver.

“Amara Darboh, I would say 

he’s our top receiver right now,” 
Harbaugh said. “And as we went 
through the season last year, I 
thought that was Jehu Chesson. 
And then Amara surged during 
spring ball there, and they’re in 
a very good-hearted competition 
there to be our best receiver.”

FOOTBALL
‘M’ embracing a 
higher standard

By JACOB GASE

Daily Sports Editor

CHICAGO — For the second 

straight year, Jim Harbaugh walked 
into the Hyatt Regency McCormick 
Place as the center of attention.

Still sporting his signature skin-

ny block ‘M’ hat despite wearing a 
full suit, the second-year Michigan 
football coach was the main attrac-
tion of the first day of Big Ten Media 
Days, with a throng of cameras and 
microphones swarming his podium 
in a hotel ballroom.

Such attention is probably to be 

expected given the social media 
buzz that surrounded Harbaugh 
since his hiring back in Dec. 2014, 
but this year’s circus came with one 

major difference. After a 10-3 inau-
gural campaign featuring a 41-7 

throttling of Florida in the Citrus 
Bowl and the narrowest of losses to 
eventual playoff-bound rival Michi-
gan State, expectations are through 
the roof.

“We raised the bar when we 

played Florida,” said senior tight 
end Jake Butt. “That’s now ground 
zero. ... I don’t think we’re chasing 
anybody.”

The Wolverines are ranked in 

the top 10 in most preseason polls 
released to date, with USA Today 
placing them as high as third — 
trailing only the final two teams 
standing last season, Clemson and 
Alabama. Among Big Ten foes, most 
of the polls have only Ohio State 
ranked ahead of Michigan, with 
Michigan State and Iowa a few steps 
below.

As expected, neither Harbaugh 

nor the players joining him in Chi-
cago on Monday would say they pay 
attention to the hype, but none were 
too shy to admit they had equally 
high hopes.

“The message is simple: We want 

our dreams to be big,” Harbaugh 
said. “We want our goals to be lofty 
— so much that people will laugh at 
us. If they’re not laughing at us, we 
didn’t set high enough goals. (We 
also have to) understand that they 
can be achieved, but they have to be 
worked for. Such a simple message, 
but it just might work.”

With a pair of first-team All-

Americans in Butt and senior cor-
nerback Jourdan Lewis, a wealth 
of experience on both sides of the 

ball and do-it-all players like red-
shirt sophomore linebacker Jabrill 
Peppers, it’s not hard to see why 
the bar is being raised.

“We can contend for (a cham-

pionship), of course,” Lewis said. 
“We have the talent, we have the 
young guys to come in and help us 
out, we have the coaching staff. We 
have everything in place to be one 
of those programs to say we can 
contend for a Big Ten or (national) 
championship.”

Media days are typically brim-

ming with optimism for every 
team, but the Wolverines have 
drawn theirs not only from their 
10 wins last season, but the way 
they rebounded from tough losses. 
Michigan won the next game fol-
lowing each of its three losses in 
2015 — the first time since 2011 the 
Wolverines had completed a sea-
son without losing back-to-back 
games.

Part of the Wolverines’ resil-

iency came from their new coach’s 
attitude, which the players noticed 
right away.

“In past years, when we lost, one 

loss would turn into two or three 
losses, and everyone would be down 
on themselves,” Butt said. “You 
could kind of feel we were lean-
ing towards that when we got in 
the locker room (after last season’s 
opening loss to Utah), but Coach 
Harbaugh looked at all of us and 
crushed that right then and there.

“He told us he was proud of us, 

he was proud of the way we played, 
and that we’re gonna be just fine 
going down the stretch. And we all 
believed him, we all bought into him 
at that point. It was such a different 
feeling.”

After the triumph in the Citrus 

Bowl, the feeling has carried over 
into 2016. Though Harbaugh is 0-2 
against Michigan State and Ohio 
State and the Wolverines haven’t 
won a Big Ten title since 2004, the 
team is starting to think that their 
coach — with all of his eccentricities 
and his media circus — might be the 
person that can bring them back to 
the top.

“It’s madness, it’s genius,” Lewis 

said. “It’s a fine line between crazy 
and genius. You can see it — he has a 
method to his madness. Everything 
is calculated, everything he does is 
for a reason.”

