Michigan clinched bowl eligibility by landing its sixth win of the season over the weekend, a 50-6 beat down of lowly Northwestern.

And while all eyes are on the rivalry game against Ohio State this Saturday (Noon, FOX), the postseason is fast approaching. In 13 days, the Wolverines will learn of their bowl draw. It won’t be a high-profile game like years past, but several intriguing sites remain a possibility for Sherrone Moore’s team.

The most popular pick this week is the Music City Bowl in Nashville, set for Dec. 30 at Nissan Stadium. It would mark Michigan’s first-ever appearance in the game and pit the Wolverines against an SEC school.

ESPN’s Mark Schlabach has Michigan playing Ole Miss in the Music City Bowl, CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm predicts a Michigan-Missouri matchup in Nashville, while USA Today’s Erick Smith projects the Wolverines to play Texas A&M. All three SEC schools have been in the playoff picture this year, setting the stage for an intriguing neutral-site game.

Three other national writers have Michigan playing in three different bowl games. ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura predicts a Michigan-Syracuse matchup in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on Jan. 3 in Charlotte. The Action Network’s Brett McMurphy, whose track-record projecting bowl sites and matchups is among the best, has the Wolverines playing Pittsburgh in the Pinstripe Bowl on Dec. 28 at Yankee Stadium in New York. And in an interesting outlier, The Sporting News’ Bill Bender projects a Michigan-Texas A&M matchup in the Dec. 31 ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa, Fla.

How the top of the Big Ten fares when it comes to the 12-team playoff matters here. Getting four teams in like some are projecting would help Michigan’s standing in the bowl selection process. But if one of those teams gets left out (looking at you, Indiana), it would almost certainly kill any chance of returning to Florida.

After the playoff bids are doled out, the Citrus Bowl has the first pick of the remaining bowl-eligible Big Ten teams, followed by the ReliaQuest Bowl (former Outback Bowl). An 8 or 9-win Illinois would likely be the next Big Ten team off the board, followed by a 7 or 8-win Iowa. After that, though, is anyone’s guess.

And what if Michigan pulls off the upset in Columbus and gets to seven wins? It could suddenly move the Wolverines up the pecking order and give the ReliaQuest Bowl a reason to pick them, provided that Indiana does make the playoff.

This week will help offer some clarity with the Big Ten standings. There’s also a possibility of college football having too many bowl eligible teams this year. And while that certainly won’t affect Michigan — its brand and following are too large to keep out, even at 6-6 — but could limit the number of secondary bowls available to the Big Ten.

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EAST LANSING, Mich. — The sight was a common one for Andrew Kolpacki. For many a Sunday, he would watch NFL games on TV and see quarterbacks putting their hands on their helmets, desperately trying to hear the play call from the sideline or booth as tens of thousands of fans screamed at the tops of their lungs.

When the NCAA’s playing rules oversight committee this past spring approved the use of coach-to-player helmet communications in games for the 2024 season, Kolpacki, Michigan State’s head football equipment manager, knew the Spartans’ QBs and linebackers were going to have a problem.

“There had to be some sort of solution,” he said.

As it turns out, there was. And it was right across the street.

Kolpacki reached out to Tamara Reid Bush, a mechanical engineering professor who not only heads the school’s Biomechanical Design Research Laboratory but also is a football season ticket-holder.

Kolpacki “showed me some photos and said that other teams had just put duct tape inside the (earhole), and he asked me, ‘Do you think we can do anything better than duct tape,?” Bush said. “And I said, ‘Oh, absolutely.’”

Bush and Rylie DuBois, a sophomore biosystems engineering major and undergraduate research assistant at the lab, set out to produce earhole inserts made from polylactic acid, a bio-based plastic, using a 3D printer. Part of the challenge was accounting for the earhole sizes and shapes that vary depending on helmet style.

Once the season got underway with a Friday night home game against Florida Atlantic on Aug. 30, the helmets of starting quarterback Aidan Chiles and linebacker Jordan Turner were outfitted with the inserts, which helped mitigate crowd noise.

DuBois attended the game, sitting in the student section.

“I felt such a strong sense of accomplishment and pride,” DuBois said. “And I told all my friends around me about how I designed what they were wearing on the field.”

All told, Bush and DuBois have produced around 180 sets of the inserts, a number that grew in part due to the variety of helmet designs and colors that are available to be worn by Spartan players any given Saturday. Plus, the engineering folks have been fine-tuning their design throughout the season.

Dozens of Bowl Subdivision programs are doing something similar. In many cases, they’re getting 3D-printed earhole covers from XO Armor Technologies, which provides on-site, on-demand 3D printing of athletic wearables.

The Auburn, Alabama-based company has donated its version of the earhole covers to the equipment managers of programs ranging from Georgia and Clemson to Boise State and Arizona State in the hope the schools would consider doing business with XO Armor in the future, said Jeff Klosterman, vice president of business development.

XO Armor first was approached by the Houston Texans at the end of last season about creating something to assist quarterback C.J. Stroud in better hearing play calls delivered to his helmet during road games. XO Armor worked on a solution and had completed one when it received another inquiry: Ohio State, which had heard Michigan State was moving forward with helmet inserts, wondered if XO Armor had anything in the works.

“We kind of just did this as a one-off favor to the Texans and honestly didn’t forecast it becoming our viral moment in college football,” Klosterman said. “We’ve now got about 60 teams across college football and the NFL wearing our sound-deadening earhole covers every weekend.”

The rules state that only one player for each team is permitted to be in communication with coaches while on the field. For the Spartans, it’s typically Chiles on offense and Turner on defense. Turner prefers to have an insert in both earholes, but Chiles has asked that the insert be used in only one on his helmet.

Chiles “likes to be able to feel like he has some sort of outward exposure,” Kolpacki said.

Exposure is something the sophomore signal-caller from Long Beach, California, had in away games against Michigan and Oregon this season. Michigan Stadium welcomed 110,000-plus fans for the Oct. 26 matchup between the in-state rivals. And while just under 60,000 packed Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, for the Ducks’ 31-10 win over Michigan State three weeks earlier, it was plenty loud. “The Big Ten has some pretty impressive venues,” Kolpacki said.

“It can be just deafening,” he said. “That’s what those fans are there for is to create havoc and make it difficult for coaches to get a play call off.”

Something that is a bit easier to handle thanks to Bush and her team. She called the inserts a “win-win-win” for everyone.

“It’s exciting for me to work with athletics and the football team,” she said. “I think it’s really exciting for our students as well to take what they’ve learned and develop and design something and see it being used and executed.”

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Amid Michigan’s widely reported pursuit of Belleville 2025 five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood, Fort Myers (Fla.) Bishop Verot four-star signal-caller Carter Smith backed off his verbal pledge to the Wolverines on Oct. 30.

Michigan secured a commitment from Underwood on Thursday, flipping him from LSU, while Smith also has found a new home.

The No. 164 overall prospect nationally, per the 247Sports Composite rankings, announced Sunday night on social media his intention to play at Wisconsin.

“I’ve talked to a lot of coaches in such a short time and have made many amazing relationships,” Smith wrote in a first-person story in the News-Press. “I am extremely grateful for all the opportunities that were offered to me. With that being said, I decided to commit to the University of Wisconsin.

“I fell in love with everything that they had to offer: an electric fan base, an incredible coaching staff, and a great education. I could not have gotten more lucky! Go Badgers!”

Smith was one of the first players to join Michigan’s 2025 class, committing in November 2023 when Jim Harbaugh was still the coach. He took a visit to Ann Arbor for the Wolverines’ showdown against Michigan State on Oct. 26, but shortly after, Michigan’s full-court press to try and land Underwood, the No. 1 recruit in the country, became highly publicized.

“He felt extremely disappointed in how they handled everything,” Smith’s father, Dan Smith, told ESPN.

After reopening his recruitment, Carter, the Gatorade Player of the Year in Florida in 2023, received interest from a handful of schools and took an official visit to Wisconsin on Nov. 15 against No. 1 Oregon. He becomes the highest-ranked prospect in the Badgers’ class and is the second former Michigan pledge to choose Wisconsin in the past week. Palatine (Ill.) four-star defensive lineman flipped his commitment on Wednesday.

Michigan turning its attention to Underwood during a season where the offense has largely been inept signals a shift in recruiting under first-year head coach Sherrone Moore. Multiple outlets have reported that Underwood is set to earn a name, image, likeness package in the millions when he is expected to ink his letter of intent during the early signing period Dec. 4-6.

The state recorder holder in passing and total touchdowns is the second No. 1 overall recruit Michigan has landed in the online rankings era.