Jim Harbaugh says ‘real possibility’ Michigan plays again this season

Michigan’s game against Ohio State on Saturday has been canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, but the season might not be over just yet for the maize and blue.

The Big Ten has a “Champions Week” on December 19, which will pit West vs. East teams that are the same seeding in their respective division. As of right now, Michigan would be taking on Illinois and former U-M quarterback Brandon Peters.

The road to playing another game isn’t exactly easy for Michigan, as they’ll have to contain the spread of the coronavirus that is now infiltrating the program in order to field a team. Even so, head coach Jim Harbaugh believes there’s a possibility Michigan will play once more this year.

“Stemming the covid positive has been the objective the last week. Still trying to get that under control. Hopefully that’ll be looking better now in the next few days. Ultimately we were told the number of people out due to covid was too high,” Harbaugh said. “There’s the real possibility that we could play again before the season is over. Like I said before, the players want to play, they wanted to play this week, they want to play next week. They’re gonna continue to condition and prepare for that possibility.”

A topic of conversation has also been the fact that Ohio State needs to have a sixth game in order to play in the Big Ten Championship Game. OSU only has played in five games, and the championship game is a week from Saturday. If the rules aren’t changed to allow Ohio State to play in the championship, if they can’t find a sixth opponent this weekend, Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said the team would play them if need be.

“We will make any adjustments from my standpoint that we need to make,” Manuel said. “So if it’s not and we make adjustments on our calendar and we play Ohio State the week of the 19th from our perspective that would be great. We will play whoever is going to be scheduled for us.”

At the very least it appears Michigan is trying to get back on the field, so don’t be surprised if you see the team in action on December 19. Who the opponent will be remains up in the air at time of publishing, though.