For a few tense minutes Saturday, Oregon looked like it might get dragged into the season’s first major upset. The second-ranked Ducks survived Boise State instead, coughing up some shaky stretches before making the defensive stops they needed and escaping with a seven-point lead in the fourth quarter.
Michigan, meanwhile, needed a much stranger kind of help.
The Wolverines got a win over Western Michigan after officials added one second back to the clock, a decision that set up a Hail Mary finish and turned an ordinary game into a wild, controversial ending. Noah Eagle, Todd Blackledge, and rules analyst Terry McAulay had the call for NBC as the sequence unfolded.
Dave Portnoy, the Big Noon Kickoff contributor and Barstool Sports founder, was in the middle of it all. One of Michigan’s loudest supporters in the media, Portnoy has also been publicly tied to the push that helped Bryce Underwood flip from LSU to Michigan, so Saturday night was already a stressful one when the quarterback struggled in a way that looked a lot like last season.
Portnoy initially sounded like he knew exactly how bad it was, posting after the Wolverines appeared to lose before the extra second was put back on the clock: “Michigan loses as 4 td favorites. We may not be good after all”
After the Hail Mary changed the outcome, Portnoy pivoted online and spent Sunday arguing that the officials had gotten it right. He also tried to shrink the significance of Michigan’s performance by going after Oregon instead.
“You know what is amazing with all this misguided Michigan hate. Oregon who is a trendy national title pick struggled with arguably a worse team in Boise than WMU. But they dont have the Block M so nobody cares”
That claim landed hard because plenty of people in media were clearly paying attention to Oregon’s scare, including some of Portnoy’s own Barstool colleagues. Big Cat posted, “Boise came to play” while PFT Commenter wrote, “This cast is a weapon. Guy might not even have a hand injury he just wanted a club pic.twitter.com/HjOr4IjUUF”
Portnoy’s line about Boise State being worse than Western Michigan also doesn’t match the Broncos’ recent results. Boise State has won the Mountain West in each of Spencer Danielson’s three seasons leading the program, while Lance Taylor has gone 20-19 over the same stretch at Western Michigan.
What Portnoy really seemed eager to avoid was the bigger conversation around Michigan itself. He helped push a recruit tied to the largest NIL deal ever, and that player has not lived up to the hype. Add in the cheating scandal and the Sherrone Moore saga, and the Wolverines are a program trying to scrape together any win, any argument, any angle that makes them look like the elite outfit they want to be.
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Michigans immediate task is straightforward, even if the pressure around it is not: stack together convincing performances and avoid leaving any doubt for the poll voters. After the opening-week escape against Western Michigan, the Wolverines do not have much margin for error, and they will need a much cleaner run in the weeks ahead to climb back into the Top 25. [Read more 🡒]