Blake Corum not backing down from Michigan facing Alabama in CFP semifinal

Blake Corum and the Michigan Wolverines have no fear entering the 2023 College Football Playoff.

Following an exhilarating Sunday, where Michigan found out they were the No. 1 seed, and drew the Alabama Crimson Tide as their opponent, the Wolverines running back elaborated on the feelings of his team.

“We knew we were going to be locked in,” Corum explained. “We knew we were one seed, two seed. It didn’t matter what seed we were getting coming into this morning. When they popped up and we were the No. 1 team in the nation, there was no better feeling.

“Then they went down to the No. 6 team, we were like, ‘Oh damn, who we playing?’ And then Alabama popped up. I would want no other team than Alabama to pop up. I love a good matchup. I love a good challenge.”

Alas, some believe Michigan were a little worried when they saw the Crimson Tide pop up on Sunday, but Corum put Wolverines faithful at ease, explaining that him and his teammates love a good challenge.

“I absolutely love it,” Corum added, regarding facing Alabama. “You don’t want the easy road. If we played Texas or Washington, those are two great teams as well. Just playing Alabama, someone — a team, a university, that’s known for winning. It feels great.

” It feels great to play Alabama. … I’m super excited.”

Time will tell if Blake Corum is still singing that tune following the showdown, but Michigan is entering the College Football Playoff as the top team, with national title aspirations.

‘Stacked’ top of CFP rankings made for ‘probably the toughest’ choice in 10-year history

Michigan ended up on top, but this season’s College Football Playoff rankings was one of the hardest to keep track of over the last decade.

In a word, the final 2023 College Football Playoff rankings were historic. An undefeated Power Five conference champion was left out of the field, as was the team that was No. 1 in the penultimate rankings, marking a first in CFP history for both in the last year of the four-team format.

It seemed like everyone was asking the same question after Saturday’s conference championships: What would the CFP committee do? To executive director Bill Hancock, it was a year like no other.

In fact, Hancock said, it might’ve been the toughest decision the committee has had to make in the CFP’s 10-year history.

“Every year is so different,” Hancock said on a post-reveal teleconference. “Just looking at it from the big picture, we’ve never had a year with eight teams at the top as good as these are, and the five conference champions one through five. We’ve never had it come out that way. My feeling is, it probably was the toughest.

“I’m gonna sound like a coach and say I need to look at the video. I need to go back and look at the year-by-year narrative that we have. But I’ll just repeat, we have not had a year where we’ve had the top stacked so strongly as we had this year.”

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.