When Michigan hired Kyle Whittingham as its football coach last December, the university billed the move as hiring an experienced leader who had made Utah one of college football’s most consistently successful programs, the kind of person who could guide the Wolverines out of two tumultuous seasons with middling results under Sherrone Moore.
In his first game in his new job, Michigan got something much different.
The No. 16 Wolverines struggled mightily in Whittingham’s Michigan debut, but avoided disaster thanks to a last-second Hail Mary touchdown to beat Western Michigan 13-12 on Saturday, Sept. 5 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
It avoided a sizable
setback for a team that entered the season with College Football Playoff aspirations and for a program that’s fewer than three full years removed from winning a national championship.
The Wolverines paid Western Michigan $1.5 million for the game, according to MLive.
It’s not an uncommon deal in college football, a sport in which programs from the power conferences regularly give an opponent from a Group of Six conference or the FCS a large payday, sometimes well over $1 million, for making the trip for a game in which the smaller school is a significant underdog.
Despite the difference in stature between the two programs, Western Michigan won the MAC last season and returned many key pieces from that squad. And the Broncos put as big of a scare as you could possibly give.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How much did Michigan football pay Western Michigan to scare living daylights out of it?
