What if Tennessee had never pulled Michael Penix Jr.'s offer and three other national title sliding doors moments

HOUSTON — Michael Penix Jr. spent much of Saturday morning retracing the twisting road that led him from Tampa to Bloomington, Ind., to Seattle. 

“A lot of ups and downs,” the Washington quarterback said. “But obviously I feel like it was all worth it. I feel like everything I’ve been through shaped me into the man and the player, the person I am today.”

But what if just one of those things had happened differently? How might it have altered the trajectory of Penix, the Huskies and the sport in general? This national title matchup between Washington and Michigan is full of sliding doors moments. Today, we’ll examine four of them. Had any of them happened differently, it would have changed the face of this college football season.

Penix is at the center of the most fascinating one…

What if Tennessee never pulled Penix’s scholarship offer?

On the weekend of the 2017 Tennessee spring game, Penix — then a three-star recruit from Tampa Bay Tech High — committed to head coach Butch Jones. Tennessee wasn’t done recruiting QBs in the 2018 class, though. Penix understood that, and he was OK with it. About a month later, Tennessee landed a commitment from Fresno (Calif.) Clovis West High QB Adrian Martinez. 

Penix planned to go to Knoxville and compete with Martinez, who held more than 25 FBS scholarship offers when he committed. At the time, Tennessee’s trajectory seemed positive. The 2016 season had started with a bang (wins against Florida and Georgia) and ended with a whimper (Champions of Life), but the Volunteers looked as if they’d be able to compete in the SEC going forward. 

Penix held firm to that Tennessee commitment even though one of the people who helped recruit him there was trying to recruit him elsewhere. When Tennessee coaches first noticed Penix in 2016, one of the staffers who Penix connected with most was an analyst named Nick Sheridan. Michigan fans reading this certainly will recognize the name. Sheridan walked on Lloyd Carr’s Michigan team in 2006 and started four games at quarterback for Rich Rodriguez’s Wolverines in 2008.

Sheridan had since moved with offensive coordinator Mike DeBord to Indiana to be the quarterbacks coach. Sheridan wore out Penix’s phone trying to flip him to the Hoosiers, but Penix was all Vol.

Unfortunately for Tennessee, the wheels fell off during the 2017 season. Jones was fired in November, and Nebraska pounced on Martinez, who would start in Lincoln for four seasons before finishing his career at Kansas State in 2022.

Penix still wanted to go to Tennessee, though. The problem is the new regime didn’t want him. Head coach Jeremy Pruitt and offensive coordinator Tyson Helton decided to look elsewhere. On Dec. 17, 2017, Penix was told not to bother coming on his official visit to Tennessee. The new Vols’ coaches had decided their QB of the future was J.T. Shrout from Newhall, Calif.

Sheridan hadn’t given up on Penix, though. But Penix still had options. Then-Florida State coach Willie Taggart, who had offered Penix as USF’s coach and as Oregon’s coach, had offered again. But to Penix and his family, that offer felt more like a courtesy than an enthusiastic invitation. So Penix chose Indiana.

After Penix’s redshirt season in Bloomington, DeBord stepped down. Who did Indiana coach Tom Allen hire to replace DeBord? Fresno State offensive coordinator Kalen DeBoer. Penix won the starting job in 2019, but he never played back-to-back full games and his season ended in early November after he suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery. DeBoer left after that season to be Fresno State’s head coach, but he knew the lefty could sling the ball like no one else he’d coached. 

So, even after ACL injuries ended Penix’s 2020 and 2021 seasons at Indiana, DeBoer was excited to take Penix out of the transfer portal. Sheridan, the coach who wouldn’t quit recruiting Penix when Penix was committed to Tennessee, was Washington’s tight ends coach. Everyone, including then-Indiana coach Allen, agreed Penix needed a fresh start. He found it at Washington, and he blossomed into one of college football’s best players.

But what if he’d gone to Tennessee? 

Because Penix’s career took a fairly circuitous path after he chose Indiana, it would be silly to predict that he might have changed the fortunes of Pruitt or the Vols had Pruitt taken Penix at Tennessee. He also might have struggled with injuries in Knoxville and transferred elsewhere. 

But given Tennessee’s QB situation, Penix might have played early. Would he have beaten out Jarrett Guarantano in 2018 or 2019? Helton left Tennessee after a year to become Western Kentucky’s head coach, and the offensive staff’s inability to develop a QB who could beat out the interception-prone Guarantano was a massive reason for Pruitt’s downfall. (Along with a slew of how-could-you-be-this-dumb NCAA recruiting violations that allowed Tennessee to fire Pruitt for free following the 2020 season.) Who knows? Maybe Penix would have allowed Tennessee to win enough to keep Pruitt employed, and maybe Penix would already be in the NFL now. 

DeBoer would have had to look elsewhere for his QB when he became Washington’s coach before the 2022 season. Instead, he landed the perfect player to combine with everything else the Huskies had.

“Me being at Indiana allowed me to get here,” Penix said Saturday. “I feel like if I didn’t go to Indiana, probably wouldn’t have met Coach DeBoer and probably wouldn’t be here. My whole path, I wouldn’t change it for anything. I’m super blessed to be here, and I feel like everything happened for a reason.”

The other QB in Monday’s national title game might have also taken a different path, though.

What if Ohio State had offered J.J. McCarthy?

Michigan quarterback McCarthy grew up in suburban Chicago, but he always cheered for the Buckeyes. He loved Terrelle Pryor and Braxton Miller, and he wanted to follow in their cleat marks. McCarthy visited Ohio State in March 2019. McCarthy told The Athletic that Buckeyes coach Ryan Day said during the visit that he wasn’t going to take a class of 2021 quarterback until the end of the summer.

Kyle McCord committed to Ohio State on April 30, 2019. (Why the early enthusiasm over McCord? It might have had something to do with his favorite target in high school: Marvin Harrison Jr.) That meant McCarthy wasn’t the QB the Buckeyes wanted. Less than three weeks later, McCarthy committed to Michigan. McCarthy is now 2-0 against Ohio State as a starter, and he’ll decide after the national title game whether he wants to go to the NFL or try to make it 3-0. After beating the Buckeyes in Ann Arbor in November, McCarthy certainly seemed pleased with the way things turned out.

“Obviously I have a personal story with that,” he said. “But, it’s just a blessing in disguise because this university is the best university in the world. And I’m so happy to be a part of it. So happy to be a part of this team.”

But what if Ohio State had offered McCarthy instead? 

McCarthy probably would have taken that offer, and he probably would have succeeded C.J. Stroud as the Buckeyes’ starter this season. And, if everything else we know of Michigan and Ohio State held constant, he probably would have beaten the Wolverines in Ann Arbor in November and the Buckeyes would have won the Big Ten and made the College Football Playoff.

With McCarthy off the board, Michigan’s most likely targets would have been Drake Maye, Tyler Buchner and McCord. Maye, who flipped his commitment from Alabama to North Carolina in March 2020, probably was always going to wind up in Chapel Hill where his father (football) and brother (basketball) had been stars. Buchner committed to Notre Dame in March 2019 and would have been difficult to flip. But with McCarthy in the 2021 class at Ohio State, McCord would have been available to the Wolverines.

This doesn’t mean the QBs would have simply been flipped for the 2023 edition of The Game. Remember, McCarthy beat out Cade McNamara — who helped Michigan to the 2021 Big Ten title — in 2022. With no McCarthy to supplant him, McNamara might have still been Michigan’s starter this year.

McCarthy throwing to Marvin Harrison Jr. and company might have been the difference in a tight game this season. Instead, a banged-up McCarthy did enough on the Michigan side and McCord threw two interceptions in a six-point Ohio State loss. A few days after The Game, McCord entered the transfer portal. He’s going to play at Syracuse in 2024.

McCarthy? He might open 2024 by winning a national title.

But would Michigan be playing against Washington on Monday if not for another chance moment?

What if Jimmy Lake hadn’t shoved Ruperake Fuavai?

When then-Washington athletic director Jen Cohen (now at USC) announced in November 2021 that she was firing Huskies head coach Jimmy Lake, she cited “a multitude of things.” Lake’s shove of walk-on linebacker Fuavai on the sideline during the Oregon game was not the sole reason for the firing, Cohen insisted.

But it probably was the reason Lake was fired when he was fired, and that firing set the Huskies on a path to the national title game.

Had Lake not made Cohen’s decision easy with that shove, he might have gotten another year. Washington was terrible in 2021, but it was only year two for Lake. Plus, 2020 counted as a year zero in a lot of people’s minds. 

The frustration was evident, though. Chris Petersen had retired following the 2019 season, and the handoff seemed so smooth. He turned over the reins to his defensive coordinator Lake. Much of the organization stayed intact. The assumption was Lake would continue Petersen’s culture, and the Huskies would be regular Pac-12 title contenders.

After going 3-1 in an abbreviated 2020 season, an opening-day loss to Montana put to rest any notion that Lake’s Huskies would be the same consistent winners Petersen’s Huskies were. Still, would Cohen have made the move without a public incident that caused her to investigate and find fissures in the locker room and coaching staff?

Or would she have kept Lake and allowed him to fire offensive coordinator John Donovan so the Huskies might improve on that side of the ball?

Had Lake been given another year, it’s probable the issues would have persisted and he would have been fired in 2022. But would DeBoer have been available then?

That’s where this one gets interesting. DeBoer might still have wound up Washington’s coach. Had the Washington job not opened following the 2021 season, it’s unclear whether any other opening that offseason would have been a fit.

DeBoer wasn’t going to be a candidate for LSU, Florida, USC or Notre Dame. Oregon seemed locked in on Dan Lanning from the start. TCU was always going to hire Sonny Dykes. Duke probably couldn’t have lured DeBoer from Fresno State. Perhaps Washington State might have considered DeBoer rather than elevating interim Jake Dickert, but Dickert had done an excellent job and had considerable support.

There’s a solid chance DeBoer would have stayed at Fresno State and replaced Lake at Washington for the 2023 season. But guess who wouldn’t have been available in the transfer portal in 2023? 

Michael Penix Jr.

Plus, DeBoer wouldn’t have had time to establish his culture at Washington. This group learned from consecutive losses to UCLA and Arizona State. Perhaps lessons from those losses informed some of the Huskies’ close wins this season.

Also, they wouldn’t have had Penix. So they probably wouldn’t be here.

But would Michigan be here if another coaching carousel moment had gone differently following the 2021 season?

What if the Minnesota Vikings had hired Jim Harbaugh instead of Kevin O’Connell?

Harbaugh went to Minnesota to interview for the Vikings job in February 2022. While the NFL operates a little differently, when a big-time college football coach goes somewhere to interview for a job, it means he’s taking that job if it’s offered.

Had the Vikings offered, Harbaugh would have left Michigan. He’d have gone to Minnesota and probably compared the prices of khakis at Kohls with Kirk Cousins.

So who would have led the way in Ann Arbor? By that point, offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore hadn’t established himself as Harbaugh’s possible successor. The Wolverines likely would have looked outside.

Two names that came up as Harbaugh’s possible departure loomed? Matt Rhule and Bill O’Brien.

Rhule had just gone 5-12 in his first season as the Carolina Panthers’ head coach, but he remained respected in the college ranks for turnaround jobs at Temple and Baylor. It’s possible Michigan could have done Rhule and the Panthers a favor, because even going into year two the Rhule-Panthers marriage seemed doomed. Instead, Rhule did get fired midway through the 2022 season and wound up as Nebraska’s coach.

You may be laughing at the O’Brien suggestion now that he’s running one of the NFL’s most anemic offenses and Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe revealed last month that former Alabama offensive coordinator O’Brien told Milroe he should switch positions. But remember the timing.

In February 2022, O’Brien had just coached Bryce Young to a Heisman Trophy. He still was the guy who had steadied Penn State following the Jerry Sandusky scandal. And many of the issues in the latter part of O’Brien’s tenure as the Houston Texans head coach had been foisted upon others in the organization. 

He would have been a much easier sell then than now. But would he have Michigan in the national title game? Probably not.

With all these questions, it’s probably best to remember what Penix said Saturday.

Everything happened for a reason.