Michigan football's national title proves players can come from anywhere and any ranking

HOUSTON — Everyone will remember the interception, and rightly so. You don’t have to scan the web for long to find viral recordings of Mike Sainristil’s College Football Playoff title game-sealing theft, perhaps most memorably from the phones of Michigan football fans who recorded the defensive back’s pick while watching at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor on Monday night.

The roar was, dare I say ... volcanic?

The moment will go down in history, as so much about U-M's 34-13 win over Washington will — a night framed for the ages. Sainristil’s interception sent thousands of students and fans into the streets around the campus and helped give the Wolverines their first football title since 1997.

So, yeah, the interception, it’s a high-def part of the digital scrapbook. That it was Sainristil, the receiver-turned-defensive back whose family fled Haiti when he was a baby, only adds to the feels of those who love the maize and blue.

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Every title team has a player or two like Sainristil, a relatively unheralded recruit who becomes a captain and voice of the team. These Wolverines have a slew of them, and that is surely Jim Harbaugh’s secret sauce to this three-year run.

Though it’s not a secret anymore, not after U-M became the first team in the College Football Playoff era to win with a roster outside the top 10 in 247 Sports' composite team talent rankings. Or, as Sainristil said in the run-up to the title game:

“We don’t have a bunch of five stars.”

He said it almost defiantly. Certainly, he said it with pride. Of course he did.

He and his teammates just broke the 10-year run of inevitability at the top rung of college football, where whoever had the most five-stars seemingly won the title.

Sainristil is the best example of what Harbaugh has built in Ann Arbor, and of the developmental strengths of his program. But he isn’t the only one.

Linebacker Michael Barrett, defensive end Jaylen Harrell and defensive tackle Kris Jenkins all made plays against Washington. Zak Zinter is another three-star turned future pro; although the offensive lineman missed the title game because of a leg injury against Ohio State, his presence in the huddle — and on the line — propelled the Wolverines this season.

No, this isn’t wholly a roster of plucky underdogs. It’s relative, right? U-M will almost always out-recruit everyone in the Big Ten not in Columbus or Happy Valley; well, at least before the Big Ten expanded west.

But even with the additions of Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington, Harbaugh — or whoever takes over for him if he leaves — won’t push U-M down with the Minnesotas and Iowas of the conference.

U-M will always attract talent. There are levels, though, and except for the occasional year when the Wolverines jump into the top five, programs like Alabama and Georgia and Ohio State will usually have more ranked talent.

Consider that U-M is the first team in the decade-long CFP era to win a title with only two five-stars — J.J. McCarthy and Will Johnson — on its roster. (Some recruiting services ranked Donovan Edwards as a five-star, too.) It also could be the first team to win without a player taken in the first round of the following NFL draft (despite Harbaugh's insistence on 20 draftable players at U-M).

Well, at least the first team since Ohio State. That’s right, the Buckeyes won the inaugural CFP in 2014 and didn’t have a player taken in the first round of that spring’s NFL draft.

Now, that Ohio State team had first-round talent; Joey Bosa and Ezekiel Elliot were two of the top four picks the following year. Just as U-M has a likely first-round talent in Johnson, who will almost certainly leave for the pros after his junior season next year; McCarthy, too, could be a first-round pick eventually if he returns for the 2024 campaign.

Perhaps some Wolverine slips into the late first round in April when the draft comes — the combine can do funny things. But you get the point. It’s not common to win the title without high-end NFL talent and, generally, a bevy of five-star recruits.

Did the Wolverines just show a new way of doing things?

Yes ... and no. Yes, because their recruiting rankings don’t lie; there aren't a lot of ultra-blue-chippers hiding in Schembechler Hall. No, because they aren’t built solely with three-stars, either. There are plenty of four-stars, and lots of those players will be playing on Sundays soon.

If U-M can’t quite recruit as an elite program, it obviously recruits at a level right below, which is to say: better than most everyone else. Still, there should be hope that the combination of identifying the right players and developing them can take a program a long way.

Maybe all the way, as the Wolverines just proved.

Said Sainristil:

“Our three-stars and two-stars ... I feel like when you’re able to develop, it isn’t just what you do on the field, it’s your knowledge of football. When you have a bunch of guys who know football, they can be on-field coaches. That's what we have a lot of here.”

Harbaugh famously changed much of his staff and a lot of his approach overall after going just 2-4 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. He wanted different schemes on the field and new ways to connect with his players off the field.

He tried to be more open, more personable. He asked for more input from everywhere. All of it led to Monday night in Houston, and to a sideline and huddle with uncommon togetherness and mental toughness.

“We didn’t have the right mindset (in 2020),” Sainristil said. “Things needed to be changed mentally. (We needed) mental training. We got a lot closer throughout the years and became more of a team.”

And now?

“The recipe we have is that we love each other,” he said.

Scoff if you must, but cynicism won’t undo the way these players played for one another this season. If Harbaugh deserves criticism for, at times, unnecessary drama and for the NCAA investigations hanging over the program, he also deserves credit for fostering the culture the country witnessed on Monday night.

Where players such as Sainristil come from relative obscurity to make the interception of their life, and step into Wolverine immortality. And where players like Sainristil make the plays they’ve been making in plain view all along.

Like the textbook tackle he made late in the first quarter, when the Huskies needed five yards for a first and Michael Penix Jr. dropped back on third down and spotted Jalen McMillan open in the right flat. All season, the Huskies’ Heisman Trophy-worthy quarterback flipped passes to his future pros on the edges of the field and watched them slip past a defender and fly.

But there was Sainristil, giving up three inches and 15 pounds, squared up and ready to ignite. McMillan had no chance. He was stopped 3 yards short.

It was a game-changing tackle, as open field tackles so often are, and when Harbaugh marveled at his defense during his giddy postgame news conference late Monday night, he mentioned his senior leader, who wasn’t sitting with him at the podium.

“Mike Sainristil?” he hollered, flanked by McCarthy, Corum and Johnson. “I hope somebody could go grab him and get him up here at the podium. Amazing. Amazing stalwart of a player. Just like these three that are here. When a play needs to be made, Mike Sainristil has made it. When a play needs to be made, Blake Corum makes it. When a play needs to be made, Will Johnson makes it. When a play needs to be made, J.J. McCarthy makes it, Donovan Edwards makes it, Jaylen Harrell makes it, Junior Colson makes it, Rod Moore makes it.”

He could’ve gone on, and would’ve gone on, listing everyone on his roster if he’d had time. But he didn’t, and he stopped himself, and wrapped it up this way:

“We've just got great players. We've got great players that unanimously support each other.”

They’ve shown it time and again, on the biggest of stages: No matter the outside noise, in the end it doesn’t matter where you come from or where you’re ranked.

Not this season, not for these Wolverines.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football proves CFP success possible without five-star kids