ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN  AUGUST 09, 2006

Expectations are high once again for Michigan.  Here's this season's look at the upcoming season and this team.

Sleeper home game [one to watch out for]: 10/28 Northwestern.
This game has let-down written all over it, sandwiched between conference pre-season top-3 Iowa and MAC cup-cake Ball State (thanks to the rule change that allowed us to pick up a 12th game). The 'Cats will be playing on emotion this season following the untimely death earlier this summer of head coach Randy Walker at age 52. Interim head coach Pat Fitzgerald knows a thing or two about beating the Wolverines, having done so twice as a player in '95 and '96. Hopefully Big Blue will shake its homecoming blues and keep Northwestern's high-powered offense at bay.

Sleeper road game [one to put you to sleep]: 11/11 at Indiana.
Slim pickens here, with epic road clashes at Notre Dame, Penn State and Ohio State, and the bring-back-the-brown-jug showdown in Minneapolis - expect a hard-fought game by a well-prepared Michigan side in each of those games. So it's the Hoosiers by default. IU hasn't fielded a decent football squad since, um, well, I suppose the days of coach Bill Mallory. The first time I got my haircut in Bloomington as a young law student in the early fall of 1994 (then coach Mallory's 10th season), I asked my barber for his thoughts on IU football. After a brief pause, the only thing my barber said was that he "wished Coach Mallory would ride straight outta town on that same damn horse he road in on." Not particularly complimentary of the school's all-time winningest coach, who compiled an impressive record of 69-77-3 (of course he had a loosing record, this is IU football we're talking about). Welcome to IU, kid. My barber had some other unpleasant things to say about Mike Tyson. Mostly, we talked about NASCAR and the Friday night amateur races at the local dirt track. But, I digress.... which is really the only thing to do when it comes to IU football. Michigan should win this one big and you should be asleep by halftime.

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