The Mirrored Paths Of Michigan And Washington Since Their Championship Showdown

Michigan and Washington converged at the pinnacle of college football. 

In Houston, Texas, the Wolverines and Huskies duked it out in the 2023 College Football Playoff National Championship, with Michigan ultimately taking home the hardware by a 34-13 final. But for two teams at the summit of it all, the next year saw the two teams relegated to the throes of relative mediocrity.

Both teams lost their head coaches before the 2024 season. The Huskies’ former head coach Kalen DeBoer took over at Alabama, and former Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh fled college football in favor of a position as the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers in the NFL.

Both teams lost their starting quarterbacks — both of whom were taken in the Top 10 of the 2024 NFL draft — alongside a plethora of other key players either to the transfer portal, graduation, or the NFL Draft. The result of all this movement was two relatively disappointing seasons from the top two teams of 2024.

Washington fared the worst of the two squads. It brought in Jedd Fisch from Arizona to assume head coaching duties, and he brought several players and coaches with him. Even coming off of a national championship appearance, the Huskies weren’t expected to be elite and were picked 10th in the conference in the preseason Big Ten poll.

At the end of the year, Washington slotted in at 11th in the Big Ten. It was the Huskies first year in the conference and it didn’t go quite as they wanted. They finished 4-5 in conference play and 6-7 overall, losing their bowl game to Louisville. With its head coach gone and the bulk of its top-tier talent gone, Washington was a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team in 2024.

Michigan suffered a similar fate, albeit with a much more satisfying end. After Harbaugh’s departure, the Wolverines searched internally for his successor, eventually landing on former offensive coach Sherrone Moore. 

On the back of the conference’s worst passing offense, Michigan finished 2024 seventh in the Big Ten with a 5-4 conference record. The Wolverines salvaged what could have been a very poor season with three straight wins to finish the season: a blowout over Northwestern, followed by two shocking victories over Ohio State and Alabama.

Interestingly, though, less than a year after the two teams met in the National Championship game, the 2024 bout between the Wolverines and the Huskies was the beginning of the end for Michigan’s 2024 playoff hopes.

Entering the game at 4-1, Michigan was ranked No. 10 in the country. To that point, its only loss was to then-No. 3 Texas, and it had a victory over then-No. 11 USC. But when the Wolverines took on Washington in Seattle, they fell apart, kicking off a 1-4 stretch with a 27-17 loss at the hands of the Huskies before the strong finish to the season.

For both programs, 2025 has been a much-improved year. Both teams received votes in the most recent AP Poll, and both believe they can be legitimate players in the Big Ten. In the season-and-a-half that has elapsed since Michigan and Washington met in the national championship game, they’ve mirrored each other in a lot of ways: both endured a relatively disappointing season in 2024, and both have experienced a resurgence of sorts thus far in 2025.

A win for either team on Saturday will set the winner up very well moving forward in conference play, and leave the loser in a tricky spot in the Big Ten standings. Not only is it a championship rematch with pride attached to it, it’s a measuring stick game that will be telling of the state of each program.