What if... J.J. McCarthy never committed to Michigan?

“Time. Space. Reality. It’s more than a linear path. It’s a prism of endless possibility. Where a single choice can branch out into infinite realities, creating alternate worlds from the ones you know.”

That’s part of the intro to Marvel’s What if... series on Disney+, the inspiration for what will be an offseason series contemplating a world where things happened differently in college football and in Ann Arbor in 2023.

Just like the Avengers conquering Thanos and restoring half of the universe’s population, Michigan was victorious over all of college football this past season.

We’ll explore worlds where things happened differently. Sometimes, the result of a championship will be the same, just in different ways. Other realities are much more grim. Maize n Brew will guide you through these realities and ponder the question, What if...

What if... J.J. McCarthy never committed to Michigan

COVID-19 is running rampant and the Big Ten cancels their football season, at first. Eventually, they evaluate the SEC and some of the other conferences in college football and determine their programs should play, including Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines.

But much scrutiny shadows over the maize and blue. It’s year six in the Harbaugh era and the vaunted quarterback guru has yet to bring in a five-star commitment at the position. In your reality, J.J. McCarthy will fulfill his destiny and head to Michigan after committing in May 2019.

However, in a much darker timeline, McCarthy takes two unofficial visits to a team down south and winds up committing to the Ohio State Buckeyes. Urban Meyer leaves for the NFL, with Ryan Day taking over. Despite being born on third base, Day makes the correct decision in pursuing McCarthy over his 2021 classmate, Kyle McCord, as his second quarterback behind No. 1 overall prospect Quinn Ewers. The decision sends ripples throughout the galaxy that changes the course of college football forever.

Back in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines are coming off a 2-4 season and the fans have turned against Harbaugh. Without McCarthy and the No. 13 overall class he helped assemble, Warde Manuel is forced to put the pressure even further on Harbaugh. While he contemplates other career options, the legendary Michigan coach decides to take a salary cut, dump almost his whole coaching staff and essentially start over at Michigan.

Cade McNamara, Blake Corum, David Ojabo and Aidan Hutchinson still take monumental leaps, as does the entire program in a miraculous comeback in the 2021 season. But the commitment from McCarthy to Ohio State led C.J. Stroud to go elsewhere, and Quinn Ewers still transferred to Texas. That left McCarthy beating out McCord for the starting role in Columbus as a true freshman. His weapons were spectacular — Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave and Marvin Harrison Jr. But Michigan still snapped the streak against Ohio State in an Ann Arbor snow globe, but there is an eerie sense among fans the Buckeyes won’t be down for long with a superstar quarterback in the making yet again for the scarlet and red.

As you can tell, many things here play out similarly to your universe. Michigan wins the Big Ten, makes the College Football Playoff for the first time in program history and gets steamrolled by Georgia. But without McCarthy waiting in the wings at Michigan and several of the program’s key players headed to the NFL Draft, Harbaugh rides the momentum he had with the Wolverines in 2021 into the NFL in his pursuit of his lifelong dream — winning a Super Bowl.

Harbaugh doesn’t have as strong of a drawback to Ann Arbor as he feels like the potential of the program tapped out, taking less money to go to coach the Minnesota Vikings.

Manuel is flung into a head coaching search deep into the cycle. Being so late in the coaching carousel, and as Mike Macdonald went back to the Baltimore Ravens, Michigan was forced to hire from within, making Mike Hart the next leader of the program. Hart was favored by Manuel, beating out offensive coordinator Josh Gattis for the role, who then left Michigan to join Mario Cristobal in Miami.

Hart was in turmoil. The departure of Harbaugh, Macdonald and Gattis left him with no returning coordinators and a roster that lost a plethora of talent on both sides of the ball. Sherrone Moore was promoted to offensive coordinator and Brian Jean-Mary was promoted on the defensive side, spurning a linebacker coaching job with Tennessee. Moore and Hart were dedicated to running the same ground-and-pound offense, but Jean-Mary switches things up on defense, now running an aggressive 3-3-5 system he learned under Charlie Strong.

In the process, Michigan loses the commitment of Will Johnson, who flips to Ohio State as McCarthy recruits the five-star corner to join him. Most of the rest of the class and roster stay intact with coaches they are familiar with. Needing quarterback depth, Michigan earns a transfer portal commitment from Alan Bowman, Texas Tech’s starter.

Fast forward to the 2022 season, and hopes are high Michigan can keep the momentum running. However, Cade McNamara suffers a “serious knee injury” in a Week 3 win over UConn and Bowman is pigeonholed into the starting quarterback role, one he was not ready for. The Wolverines stumble in his first start against the Maryland Terrapins, then lose to Iowa in Iowa City the next week. As quickly as the Wolverines shot up the college football landscape, they collapsed back to mediocrity just as quickly due to misfortune, finishing the season 8-4.

As the Wolverines skid, Ohio State roars back to the top of the Big Ten thanks to the talents of McCarthy, and his deep receiver group. In his second full season as the starter, McCarthy leads the Buckeyes to an emphatic win over Michigan back in the Shoe, a Big Ten Championship and a No. 1 ranking in the College Football Playoff.

Instead of facing Georgia in the semifinal, the Buckeyes met the Bulldogs in the National Championship. Even with a tight loss, Ohio State reconfirmed its spot as the top dog and reinstalled its reign after a one-year vacancy from kings of the Big Ten as the Wolverines slumped back to the middle of the pack. McCarthy was the straw that stirred the drink, and his decision to go south of the Michigan border changed the course of college football forever.