{"id":871886,"date":"2026-04-22T12:51:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/871886\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T12:51:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:51:42","slug":"should-michigan-be-nervous-about-bryce-underwood-do-athletes-still-go-to-class-mandels-mailbag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/871886\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Michigan be nervous about Bryce Underwood? Do athletes still go to class? Mandel\u2019s Mailbag"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry I wasn\u2019t here last week. I was too busy traversing Bloomington<\/a> and Indianapolis. Shout out to Shapiro\u2019s and Buffa Louie\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get back at it.<\/p>\n

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n

Hi Stewart! How much should we care about spring games? I saw Bryce Underwood\u2019s numbers, and I can\u2019t help but be a bit nervous. \u2014 Mike M.<\/p>\n

I might be in the minority, but I\u2019m someone who takes stock in spring game performances. Mind you, context is everything. Was it first team offense vs. first team defense, or starters vs. backups? What key players were missing? How many series did the star quarterback actually play?<\/p>\n

In my experience, the guys who play well in the fall don\u2019t generally bomb in the spring game. And for that reason, I\u2019m nervous about Bryce Underwood, too.<\/p>\n

Michigan\u2019s $12 million quarterback was underwhelming as a true freshman starter, finishing 94th in the country in passer rating. But most true freshman starters have a rocky first year: Bo Nix at Auburn (81st nationally in passer rating), Dylan Raiola at Nebraska (82nd) or Dante Moore at UCLA (didn\u2019t qualify, but he would have been around 80th). So, Underwood deservedly got a pass.<\/p>\n

If you were a Michigan fan tuning into Saturday\u2019s spring game<\/a>, you just wanted to see some sign he\u2019s been progressing under new coach Kyle Whittingham and offensive coordinator Jason Beck. Instead, you saw him go 3-of-9 for 22 yards while playing just a quarter, overthrowing open receivers on his two longest passes and throwing into traffic on another. In his defense, his pocket was constantly collapsing, forcing him to tuck and run.<\/p>\n

Still, freshman Tommy Carr (Lloyd Carr\u2019s grandson and CJ Carr\u2019s brother) had a better day.<\/p>\n

The good news: It was just one scrimmage. Underwood has the whole summer and preseason camp to get into the flow of Beck\u2019s offense and build rapport with his receivers. Unfortunately, though, it\u2019s the one scrimmage everyone saw, so that will be our lasting image of Underwood for the next four months.<\/p>\n

As an aside: Watch out for the Wolverines\u2019 five-star freshman RB Savion Hiter. He looked like a potential tackle-breaking machine.<\/p>\n

In an era where players can play at multiple schools in their college career, which school (and conference, for that matter) gets to claim they put a player into the NFL? For example, Fernando Mendoza spent the majority of his career at Cal, but his brief time at Indiana is what made him the likely No. 1 pick in this week\u2019s draft. \u2014 Nicholas R.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is a valid question. As it is, the NFL and pretty much every media outlet defaults to the player\u2019s last school. But should they? Should it be where the guy spent the majority of his career? Where he got his undergraduate degree? Where he had his best production? Is this going to become like the Baseball Hall of Fame when there\u2019s debate over which cap a player should be wearing on his plaque?<\/p>\n

But more often than not, a player\u2019s performance at his most recent school is what got him drafted. It\u2019s probably the tape teams are watching the most. Mendoza might have been a mid-round pick without his year at Indiana. David Bailey had flashes at Stanford, but nothing like his monstrous season at Texas Tech. Same goes for Dillon Thieneman moving from Purdue to Oregon.<\/p>\n

One player I always felt bad about his old school not getting credited was Jalen Hurts. He was at Alabama for three years, started two national championship games and, even after he got benched, came in for Tua Tagovailoa to win the SEC championship game. But now he\u2019s forever associated with one season at Oklahoma. However, without that one season under Lincoln Riley to resurrect his career, he\u2019s probably not a Super Bowl champion starter.<\/p>\n

All of which is a long way of my saying: It\u2019s probably fine to keep doing it the way we\u2019ve been doing it.<\/p>\n

Stew: With the NCAA considering a move to start the season in Week 0<\/a> come 2027, wouldn\u2019t this be a great opportunity to have a standalone game each night, Thursday-Monday night, for two straight weeks? What unique scheduling approaches can conferences\/teams make to maximize viewership at the start of the season? \u2014 Paul G.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why stop there, right? Why couldn\u2019t we have a game every night for 12 straight nights from the Thursday of Week 0 (which will be Aug. 26) through Labor Day night (Sept. 6)? There\u2019s not much else going on then, and a whole lot of schools would get to play in high-exposure windows. Granted, you might have a hard time convincing the major schools to play on a random Tuesday or Wednesday game, but that\u2019s fine. I\u2019m sure most G6 schools would jump at it.<\/p>\n

It could also help alleviate the most obvious drawback of starting the season earlier: It\u2019s really freaking hot in most places. You could shift a lot of Texas\/Florida\/Arizona games into nighttime windows.<\/p>\n

But most importantly, it\u2019s an extra week of not competing with the NFL, which, in the last couple of years, has been hogging even more oxygen. Last year, it added a Friday night game from Brazil in Week 1 (though that\u2019s not happening this year) and a Black Friday game that could reportedly become a doubleheader this season. Also, it got so ticked when the CFP put the new first-round games on the third Saturday in December that it started moving better games to that day and gave them to Fox\/CBS instead of NFL Network.<\/p>\n

So I say, the more exclusive college windows the better.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one problem with all this. We need some better games in the first week. After years of several high-profile Week 1 nonconference games, this year\u2019s Week 1 (which would become Week 0) is a dud. Especially that first Saturday. LSU-Clemson is the marquee game, but after that, it\u2019s Boise State-Oregon. And then \u2026 Baylor-Auburn? UCLA-Cal? You at least get Louisville-Ole Miss and Wisconsin-Notre Dame on Sunday, but even those are a rung or two down from LSU-USC and Notre Dame-Miami the past two seasons.<\/p>\n

Giving the sport a bigger spotlight is all good unless the games they\u2019re spotlighting are mostly meh.<\/p>\n

Looking at Dane Brugler\u2019s \u201cThe Beast,\u201d<\/a> Ryan Day looks like a much better recruiter than coach. What would another coach do with Ohio State\u2019s recruits? \u2014 Rhodes S.<\/p>\n

With that much talent, I think it\u2019s fair to expect someone to win at least 87 percent of his games, make the Playoff at least five out of every seven years and hoist at least one national championship trophy.<\/p>\n

Like Ryan Day.<\/p>\n

\"Ryan<\/p>\n

\n Ohio State will have a plethora of high NFL Draft picks this year. (Ben Jackson \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Iowa Hawkeyes appear to be having their best recruiting year (2027) in Iowa football history. Kirk Ferentz just turned a very healthy 70. Could he get the Hawkeyes to a national championship?? \u2014 Dave O.<\/p>\n

Easy, now. Let\u2019s not go reading too much into April recruiting rankings. (Iowa is 19th on 247Sports based on eight commitments.)<\/p>\n

But if nothing else, I\u2019d love to see Ferentz reach a Playoff before he\u2019s done. And I don\u2019t see why he can\u2019t. Looking back, the 2025 team was not that far off. Yes, the Hawkeyes went a modest 8-4 in the regular season, but consider:<\/p>\n

They were tied with eventual national champion Indiana with less than two minutes left, before giving up a 49-yard Mendoza-to-Sarratt touchdown pass. Even then, they held the Hoosiers to 20 points, their second-lowest all season.<\/p>\n

They lost to Iowa State 16-13 on a 54-yard field goal and to Oregon on a last-second field goal, despite holding the Ducks to a season-low 18 points.<\/p>\n

They beat a 10-win Vanderbilt team that had only one opt-out in the ReliaQuest Bowl, sacking Diego Pavia five times.<\/p>\n

Mind you, the season followed a familiar Ferentz script: Defense was filthy, especially up front, while the offense, though not 2021-23 horrible, still finished in the 100s. Not great when you\u2019re losing games 16-13 and 18-16. If Ferentz and Iowa are ever going to take that next step, they really need to develop some explosiveness.\u00a0 L.J. Phillips Jr. last year\u2019s FCS rushing leader out of South Dakota, could make an impact, though he is a 5-foot-9, 225-pounder known more for bouncing off tacklers than burner speed.<\/p>\n

And of course, quarterback is always an adventure. It\u2019s a competition right now between third-year sophomore Jeremy Hecklinski, who\u2019s barely played, and Auburn transfer Hank Brown, who in his one career P4 start two years ago against Arkansas, threw three first-half interceptions and got pulled at halftime.<\/p>\n

Ferentz\u2019s teams were not always so out of balance. I\u2019m old enough to remember when Nate Stanley and the Hawkeyes hung 55 points on No. 3 Ohio State in 2017. Or the good old days of Ricky Stanzi-to-Marvin McNutt circa 2009-10. But even those teams back then would not have been CFP material. Iowa would have made a 12-team Playoff in 2009 and 2015.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s ancient history. Let\u2019s get Ferentz in before it\u2019s too late. And without needing Tony Petitti to double the size of the field first.<\/p>\n

This question makes me sad, but do you believe any non-SEC or Big Ten team will ever win the national championship again? (Or until the next super expansion?) I realize Miami got close, but for every Miami and Texas Tech, there are SEC and Big Ten teams with as much money or more. \u2014 Paul\u00a0<\/p>\n

It will be primarily SEC\/Big Ten, but at the very least, Notre Dame, Miami, Florida State and Clemson can absolutely still win a national championship with the right coach. The Irish have Big Ten\/SEC money, Miami seems to have a bottomless well of it, and FSU\/Clemson successfully got the ACC to drum up a revenue formula that\u2019s rigged in their favor.<\/p>\n

Beyond those, though, it might depend on how the entire model evolves or devolves over the next several years.<\/p>\n

If the schools had actually devised an effective, enforceable hard name, image and likeness cap (CSC is not that), it would theoretically curtail the abilities of a Cody Campbell-type to buy Texas Tech a championship. But given we\u2019re already hearing about $30 million to $40 million rosters, clearly that ship has sailed. Which is good news for a Texas Tech or BYU that has a major benefactor on top of rev-share.<\/p>\n

\"Behren<\/p>\n

\n Texas Tech rose to prominence this season after dramatically increasing its spending. (Brien Aho \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s one thing for Texas Tech to reach the Playoff and lose 20-0 to Oregon; it\u2019s another to actually win the whole thing, which seems unlikely. Though Indiana was in theory a great rags-to-riches story, in reality it already had plenty of riches just by being in the Big Ten. If you had to guess today who will be the \u201cnext Indiana,\u201d you\u2019d be smarter to pick a currently irrelevant Big Ten\/SEC school than ACC\/Big 12.<\/p>\n

\u201cEver again\u201d is a long, long time. Indiana alone taught me to believe you should never say never. But if you\u2019re asking me, over the next five years, will a school outside of the SEC\/Big Ten and the four programs I mentioned earlier win a natty?<\/p>\n

Realistically, no.<\/p>\n

What percentage of college football players even pretend to attend class or take school seriously? I attended Wisconsin during the Melvin Gordon-TJ Watt-Jonathan Taylor era. While those guys were big men on campus, you would see them in the lecture halls and libraries with all of us mortals. With how big the money has gotten and with so many players transferring every year, I wonder if there is any illusion that these guys are \u201cstudent-athletes\u201d anymore? \u2014 Sam\u00a0<\/p>\n

I feel like I get questions like this every week. At 50, I\u2019m not exactly plugged into modern campus life, but here\u2019s what I can tell you:<\/p>\n

The NCAA still has three key eligibility requirements for athletes: 1. You have to take at least six credit hours each term. 2. You have to maintain at least a 2.0 GPA. 3. You have to remain on track to graduate (i.e., 40 percent completed coursework after Year 2, 60 percent after Year 3). If NIL\/the portal is turning athletes into a bunch of slackers, then we\u2019d surely see more cases of players being deemed academically ineligible. We are not.<\/p>\n

Obviously, there are shortcuts. They can enroll in an easier major or load up on easy electives. And the major programs in particular have entire departments of academic advisers\/counselors\/tutors to help. But we all know that was the case long before NIL was ever a thing. See UNC for one.<\/p>\n

The biggest change of course is the prevalence of online classes or hybrid in-person\/video call classes. Anecdotally, there\u2019s no question a lot of athletes lean heavily on those options, especially during the season. But sometimes they don\u2019t have a choice. The UCLA basketball team can\u2019t exactly hit the lecture halls when it spends an entire week traveling to Penn State and Ohio State.<\/p>\n

Online courses are particularly relevant with the portal. If a player\u2019s credits from one school don\u2019t transfer to the next one, he might be able to make it up online in time for the season.<\/p>\n

So far, there\u2019s been no real decline in the NCAA\u2019s Graduation Success Rate, which tracks how many athletes graduate within six years of starting college. In 2025, that number was 90 percent among all athletes and 84 percent in FBS football. However, the most recent data was for athletes who enrolled between 2015 and 2018, so we won\u2019t truly know the effect for another few years.<\/p>\n

One thing I\u2019m not sure most people realize is that grad rates have gone way up over time. Both those numbers are about 20 points higher than they were two decades ago. Personally, in my admittedly limited interactions \u2014 be it news conferences, phone interviews or occasional sit-down interviews, I find today\u2019s athletes to be more well spoken and more engaging than 20 years ago. I believe that\u2019s in part because they\u2019re exposed to so much more than before they even get to college, be it through the recruiting circuit, travel ball, and of course, social media. They\u2019re savvier.<\/p>\n

Remember, all the business-y stuff surrounding college sports that we older folks find so jarring \u2014 athletes now never knew it any other way. So, though Sam\u2019s question (and others like it) is completely understandable, I\u2019d posit that most athletes are better equipped to deal with this stuff than many give them credit.<\/p>\n

Finally, I did survey a few of The Athletic\u2019s current or recent college grads for their feedback. They reported that yes, they do see players in their classes, both online and in person.<\/p>\n

Props to them. That would not have been the answer 30 years ago if someone asked Northwestern students whether they saw me in classes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sorry I wasn\u2019t here last week. I was too busy traversing Bloomington and Indianapolis. Shout out to Shapiro\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[331,7,4725,1286,2972,71,49,48,69,4721],"class_list":{"0":"post-871886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-indiana-hoosiers","11":"tag-iowa-hawkeyes","12":"tag-miami-hurricanes","13":"tag-michigan-wolverines","14":"tag-ncaa","15":"tag-ncaa-football","16":"tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","17":"tag-texas-tech-red-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116448454292400889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}