While Michigan football likes to secure players from in-state, the Wolverines were long ago spurned by one of their own. But perhaps he’s paying it forward now years later.
A native of Flint, Michigan, Mark Ingram ended up going to play college football at Alabama before having a successful pro career. Now that his NFL days are over, he’s supplanting Reggie Bush as one of the new analysts for Fox Sports’ college football coverage.
Newly hired, Ingram wasted no time sharing what team he thinks is the best in college football this year, and he has quite good reasoning as to why he believes that Michigan football is the team to beat in 2023.
“You’ve got Georgia trying to break in a new quarterback, Alabama breaking into a new quarterback. You’ve got Ohio State — Ryan Day, Marvin Harrison Jr. — they’re breaking in a new quarterback,” Ingram said. “You’ve got Michigan returning a quarterback, a double-headed monster at running back, 14 starters on offense and defense.
“So are they the early season favorite? Go blue? Jim Harbaugh and those boys up there? I think so. I kind of like returning starters. You know what I mean? And Michigan, right now, I think is the early favorite.”
The returning experience notion is one we’ve pointed out for years, especially at the quarterback position. Of course, that also requires the team to stay healthy. Youth and inexperience aren’t always a death knell, but experienced teams do tend to perform better as a whole compared to teams breaking in a lot of new talent.
Still, games are played for a reason, so we’ll see what the Wolverines are capable of coming up.
Nonetheless, while Ingram may not have ended up in Ann Arbor, he’s certain to get some new fans in the Great Lakes State with his latest video.
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