NEWSLETTER College Football Prediction From Jason Sharpe
Take #346 Michigan (-15) over Oregon State (Noon, Saturday, Sept. 12)
Now that their first game is out of the way, the Michigan Wolverines and head coach Jim Harbaugh can get down to relaxing and playing some football. The Wolverines had to deal with all the first game pressures and the ‘Harbaugh Hype’ was at it’s peak last week as the Wolverines had to not only deal with playing on the opening night of the CFB season on national TV but also going up against a quality veteran Utah team on the road. The Utes were fired up for this one and came into this season very confident after beating the likes of USC, Stanford and UCLA last year. Add all of this up with the effects of the high altitude at Utah and Michigan was going into a very difficult situation for any team to play it’s first game of the year. Despite all of this the Wolverines actually hung in the game and were just a play or two away from winning it. Now Michigan is at home to what should be a very festive atmosphere at the ‘Big House’, the largest stadium in all of CFB. Their opponent is a lot like the Wolverines last week as Oregon State also has a new coach this year and will be playing it’s first road game of the season and doing do so with a true freshman quarterback.
Though OSU got an opening-week win last week, it was a huge struggle against FCS Weber State, a team Oregon State was favored to beat by 27.5 points. Oregon State ended up adding on two late scores in the game and getting a hard-fought 27-6 win. Now the Beavers must travel east here and will have to deal with 110,000+ very excited fans that have waited all offseason for the ‘welcome back Harbaugh’ game. Lastly, Oregon State is also playing what amounts to a start time of 9 a.m. PST here in this one here on the road. This all adds up to a very difficult spot for them the Beavers. Play Michigan here minus the points.