J.J. McCarthy Was Not Named One Of Michigan's Captains, Which Is Controversial For Some Reason

Michigan announced their team captains today. Michigan's captaincy situation has always been met with a lot of strong opinions. There was a time when Michigan voted for new captains every single game. I can't remember if that was Hoke or RichRod, but it was very silly. I also don't understand why naming captains requires a press release. I get it in pro sports. Some teams don't have captains, so it is a unique story when you see one of your guys have a "C" on their jersey. Michigan's captains for this upcoming season weren't that surprising. Players like Blake Corum and Mike Sainristil have been huge pieces of Michigan's recent resurgence. The one omission was that quarterback J.J. McCarthy was not voted team captain. There was a reason for this (I'll talk about it in a second), but if you check the beautiful world of Twitter, you'll see that this was met with a lot of controversy.

I'm going to be honest. I don't give a shit who the captains are of my football team. From an outsider's perspective, I get it. When evaluating the future of a quarterback, scouts take EVERYTHING into account. That's the future. I really don't care about the future. I care about the present. I feel like some people still live with the mindset that Michigan football is still what it was in 2019. When things are going sideways, you'll always look for reasons to explain why. But Michigan football is in better standing right now than it has been since they won a share of the National Championship in 1997. 

When you can't shit on the on-field product, you look for external things to bitch about. If I felt like J.J. McCarthy not getting voted captain was actually a big deal, I'd say it. There have been times during the Harbaugh era in which I questioned the leadership. That is not the case here. Even if I felt like McCarthy not being a captain divided the locker room in some way, I highly doubt it would impact the end result. Maybe I'm silly to feel that way, but not being a captain doesn't take away from what he did in Columbus last year.

The discourse regarding quarterback captaincy is a bizarre hot button in the state of Michigan. Eight years ago, Connor Cook was not voted team captain at Michigan State. Local media ran with it as if he had committed a crime. I'm a Michigan fan, but even I was like, "Jesus, lay off the kid." And for what it's worth, Cook not being named captain had zero impact on the bottom line. That team made the College Football Playoff, much like Michigan has the last two years. It's almost as if people get really bored during the offseason and try way too hard to search for controversy that doesn't exist. 

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I'm leaving out one massive piece of this. Non-seniors are not allowed to be voted captain at Michigan this year. That's it. End of story. Shoutout to my best friend, Anthony Broome, for reporting that. It's so weird how the objective truth gets reported sometimes, and people still run with their own narrative. I've written blogs about this team already. I don't know how many games they'll win, but I know they will be damn good. The circus that comes with a Jim Harbaugh offseason is annoying as hell, but it doesn't change how I feel about the product. A few years ago, Michigan had a quarterback who openly admitted to not knowing the name of the best player on an opposing defense. We've come a long way since then.