1972 Michigan Wolverines football team
football team of the University of Michigan during the 1972 season
The 1972 Michigan Wolverines football team was an American football team that represented the University of Michigan in the 1972 Big Ten Conference football season. In their fourth season under head coach Bo Schembechler, the Wolverines compiled a 10–1 record, outscored opponents 264–57, and were ranked sixth in both final polls (Coaches and AP). Offensive guard Tom Coyle and defensive back Randy Logan were the team captains.
Michigan won its first ten games with four conference shutouts (Northwestern, Michigan State, Minnesota, Iowa), and was ranked third in the AP Poll prior to its 14–11 road loss to rival Ohio State in late November.
Two Wolverines were consensus first-team All-Americans: senior team captain Randy Logan and offensive tackle Paul Seymour. Schembecher won the first Big Ten Football Coach of the Year Award based on a poll of news media covering the conference.
Schedule
Rankings
Season summary
Preseason
The 1971 team compiled an 11–1 record, outscored opponents 421 to 83, won the Big Ten Conference championship, and was ranked #4 in the final Coaches Poll and #6 in the final AP Poll. The Wolverines lost 13 starters from the 1971 team, including Mike Taylor, a consensus All-American linebacker, Reggie McKenzie, a consensus All-American at offensive guard, Billy Taylor, who set Michigan's career rushing record with 3,072 yards, and defensive back Thom Darden.
On offense, the Wolverines' priorities going into the 1972 season included the development of a passing game, as Tom Slade, Larry Cipa and Kevin Casey had combined for less than 700 passing yards in 1971. Shortly before the season opener, coach Schembechler announced that sophomore Dennis Franklin would be the starting quarterback.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1972 Michigan Wolverines football team” as football team of the University of Michigan during the 1972 season. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as football team of the University of Michigan during the 1972 season. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4575063. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972 and 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “1972 Michigan Wolverines football team” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.