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Welcome back to the Sports Potato!

Giving this a go again and figured I’d do it kicking off the college football season. Cut me some slack on the look and feel for a bit - it’s a work in progress after all. Rome wasn’t built in a day, either.

Hopefully I’ll keep it running (weeklyish is the plan) so cheer me on like you do your favorite team - likely the Wolverines!

So, here we go…

We’re a few days away from the most important season in Michigan football history. Of course, we said that the year before, and the one before that, but this one seems different. Actually, it doesn’t seem different, it is different.

The reason being – expectations. They are back, big, and always very dangerous for anyone, but especially a Michigan football fan. The haters are just waiting to pounce.

We’re ranked #2 to start the season, the analysts for the first time in forever actually think we’re better than OSU, and we can legitimately win the title – it’s scary! And, exciting?

Whoa, whoa, whoa … let’s hold on here. Let’s dive into the offseason for a moment, first.

This offseason sadly has been one of withdrawal. I didn’t know how to recover from the TCU game debacle. It took a long time. It still stings just as much as 2006 and 2016 Ohio State do.

It isn’t that we lost of course to TCU, it was how we lost. So many bonehead decisions on so many fronts that it made Don Brown’s all out blitzes on 3^rd and 21 look genius.

It has been super painful to get over, and then the whole Harbough thing has just been plain ugly and annoying. It will be the last straw and I think he’s gone to the NFL next season.

But, somehow and for some reason I do always recover. I’m a huge Michigan fan after all – and no one can take a punch more than a Wolverine. We’re the Rocky of college football (Rocky 1 that is), but now it’s time for us to be Rocky 2 and show that we’re not actually a fluke and knockout OSU/Georgia/Bama for good and win the whole damn thing. Yo, Adrian, Michigan did it!

So, we’re going into this season with a ton of momentum and confidence. We know who we are, what we want to, and have a ton of talent all across the board. Our QB is elite, our offensive line is elite, our RBs are elite, our defensive backfield is elite and the list goes on. And, we can fix some of our kinks while we play cupcake city (hopefully) early on in the season.

Which brings me to the opening week’s game prediction:

EAST CAROLINA AT MICHIGAN -35 O/U: 51

I don’t know much about East Carolina other than there should be a state with East to start its name, but I do know they were fun to watch last year and won a decent amount of quality football games including their bowl game. I actually think this line is a bit high.

They did lose a lot of talent on offense. Their former QB is trying to make the Seahawks – so he was no joke - and that’s usually a really bad sign for a mid-tier team the following year. But their backup seems rather impressive in size and speed and does have some experience under his belt.

So, what’s this all mean? I think this game is going to be closer than the spread says and take the over as I don’t see ECU’s defense able to contain our offense (and I think our defense isn’t going to be as good as last year).

ECU might hang around for a while, but at some point we should start to cruise and winning is all that matters these days. Nothing pretty here, but nothing ugly either.

PREDICTION: Michigan 48 - 17

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