The Blueprint: How Michigan Rebuilt Itself to Bring Bryce Underwood Home

Published November 25, 2025

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — It’s 10:37 a.m. on an unseasonably warm Saturday in mid-October when a Michigan football player sporting three-quarter pants and an oversized No. 19 T-shirt begins snaring passes with panache, delighting spectators who have trickled into Michigan Stadium long before kickoff against Washington.

He makes a hip-flipping snag across his body. A one-handed snatch on a back-shoulder throw. An aerial seizure in which the ball niftily changes hands mid-flight, like a magician practicing misdirection. A gaudy, shimmering chain roughly an inch thick reverberates off his chest with each fluid movement, the body control indistinguishable from that of a wide receiver. And whenever he opens his mouth to smile, which happens quite often when you’re Bryce Underwood, a hometown hero-turned-teenage millionaire now starting at quarterback for the Wolverines, the sparkling grill affixed to his teeth is momentarily visible.

By this point, he's already completed a weekly pregame walk with Michigan offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey, pausing at predetermined yard lines to talk through what the opposing defense likes to run in certain parts of the field. It’s a popular time for fans in the first few rows to reach toward Bryce with autograph paraphernalia extended, begging for a selfie. Lindsey reminds the true freshman to put his earpiece in, to create a natural barrier between himself and the fervent attention that has engulfed Bryce, a native of nearby Belleville, Michigan, roughly 18 miles east of campus, for nearly half his life.

"I don’t see myself as being famous," Bryce told me in a wide-ranging conversation inside Schembechler Hall. "I see myself as a regular person. But, of course, I can’t do certain things. I can’t move the exact same way as a regular person would. I just don’t see myself as, ‘Oh, a celebrity, famous!’"

Because the modern era of collegiate athletics allows athletes to profit from revenue-sharing agreements with their respective schools and third-party NIL deals with outside entities, there’s an undertone of monetary value intrinsic to any conversation about Bryce’s fame. The idea that there are certain things Bryce can’t do is easily conflated with things he probably shouldn’t do because of risks they might pose to his earning power, both at Michigan and beyond. But that’s a prickly truth for such a young, talented individual to accept.

Which is why everyone close to Bryce, the people in his inner circle, understand just how important those fancy pregame catches really are for an 18-year-old who is almost always expected to carry himself like a grown man. Deep down, beneath the brand deals, the social media followers and the business pitches from billionaires, they know Bryce is still the same kid who wanted nothing more for a recent birthday than the chance to play wide receiver in a touch football game with his friends, family and youth coaches. When some of the adults expressed consternation over potential injuries, Bryce’s father stepped in to remind them that his son deserved to have fun like everybody else. Bryce, who is now listed at 6-foot-4 and 228 pounds, caught everything with one hand that day, too.

Around that same time, while Bryce was still in high school, Michigan stomached the uncomfortable letdown attached to its original recruitment of a local phenom who grew up idolizing the maize and blue. When Bryce initially committed to LSU on Jan. 6, 2024, in between the Wolverines’ national semifinal win over Alabama and a championship-game victory over Washington, few Michigan fans batted an eye because their team was so far out of the running. Smartly or not, former head coach Jim Harbaugh had deemphasized high school recruiting during that cycle to funnel even more resources toward winning the national title in what was widely presumed to be his final season.

Efforts to reconnect Bryce with Michigan, which can vault itself toward the College Football Playoff by beating No. 1 Ohio State on Saturday (noon ET on FOX), hinged on the program’s embrace of fresh approaches to player acquisition and roster construction that are more aligned with other blue bloods. Improved synchronization between football and fundraising became a necessary sweetener in the Wolverines’ second attempt, a pursuit that portrayed Bryce as a hometown hero with lifelong access to an impressive alumni base — all while remaining within 35 minutes of his parents and sister, with whom Bryce is particularly close.

Everything about the revised courtship felt like a professional franchise pursuing its most coveted free agent, which carried significant appeal to a player who has operated professionally for years. The Bryce-ification of Michigan was a driving factor in his decision to join the Wolverines.

"When you meet a family like the Underwoods and you think, ‘That’s a fit,’" Jared Wangler, the co-founder of Champions Circle, a sports marketing agency specializing in generating revenue for Michigan’s athletes, told me, "it’s like, OK, let’s make sure money is off the table. That stuff will be handled. Let’s get down to development. Let’s get down to the relationships of what makes Michigan different than everybody else.

"That part of it, I feel like, is what we all know, but the general public doesn’t know."

*** *** ***

In August 2024, as the Wolverines prepared for their first season without Harbaugh, there was a meeting at Schembechler Hall to discuss how NIL resources would be allocated in the coming year. New head coach Sherrone Moore and general manager Sean Magee represented the football department, while Wangler and fellow Champions Circle co-founder Nate Forbes, managing partner of The Forbes Company and a former minority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, were representing the entity that raised all the capital to build the Wolverines’ roster before revenue sharing was enacted earlier this year.

Line by line, they moved through the depth chart to understand the dollar amounts ascribed to each spot: WR1, WR2, TE1, TE2, on down the list. Eventually, the conversation shifted to quarterback — a position that would remain a revolving door throughout Moore’s first season as Davis Warren, Alex Orji and Jack Tuttle failed to meet the program’s standard. That the roster still lacked a clear successor for 2025 meant Michigan would need to act aggressively on the open market.

Someone in the room mentioned Bryce, the No. 1 overall recruit in the country who had been committed to LSU since January. He was still a few months from officially putting pen to paper during the early signing period, which invited an obvious question: Did Michigan’s new regime have a shot? The men rehashed everything they knew about the Wolverines’ earlier recruitment of Bryce, parsing through what went right and what went wrong, discussing which relationships would need to be repaired. Though the odds of re-catching Bryce’s attention were long, it still seemed feasible based on what they knew the Underwoods were valuing in potential suitors. It was time, as one person familiar with the meeting said, for Michigan to go "full kitchen sink."

"We have a story to tell," Forbes, the executive chair of the Champions Circle board, said that day. "And we are going to get an audience and we’re gonna do our best to go get him."

At that moment, Forbes was the only person in the room who didn’t have a preexisting relationship with Bryce from earlier stages of the recruitment. But so much about the situation had changed that all of them would be getting something of a fresh start: Moore replaced Harbaugh as head coach, which meant Bryce could now see him through a significantly different lens; Magee returned for a second stint at Michigan, this time as general manager, to oversee roster management and player acquisition via an NFL-style model; Wangler, Forbes and Champions Circle were no longer constrained after an injunction in Tennessee federal court suddenly permitted schools to negotiate NIL deals with prospective student-athletes, drastically changing how they conducted business.

Prior to that ruling, the program’s preferred NIL strategy revolved around compensating players who were already on the team to accentuate Harbaugh’s credo that attending Michigan should be "transformational, not transactional." But the cost of maintaining the Wolverines’ roster jumped from roughly $4 million in 2023 to nearly $12 million in 2024, a source said, straining the available budget based on fundraising efforts at the time. If Michigan wanted to remain among the sport’s elite after three consecutive trips to the College Football Playoff, the level of investment needed to change. Since then, the same source said, the price of Michigan’s roster has effectively doubled for the 2025 season.

It was around that same time — amid the transition from Harbaugh to Moore ahead of the 2024 campaign — that a group of very wealthy fans, including software billionaire Larry Ellison and his wife Jolin Zhu, a Michigan graduate, began contributing more significant gifts to assuage the eight-figure roster payrolls that were radicalizing college football. The sums those people contributed helped the Wolverines retain stars like Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant and Colston Loveland, all of whom were offered significant deals by other schools. It also armed the program with enough resources for simultaneous pursuits of elite high school talent like Bryce.

"That’s college sports in today’s day and age," Wangler told me. "You’ve got to have the business side of it figured out."

Newfound alignment on the business side allowed Michigan to express with confidence that it could deliver significant financial promises if Bryce decided to flip, even though the Wolverines hadn’t operated in that stratosphere before. And once such assurances had been communicated to the Underwoods — specifics of the compensation package, which Bryce's father told the Wall Street Journal could "exceed $15 million" during his collegiate career, weren't discussed until shortly before Bryce flipped his commitment on Nov. 21, 2024 — the small working group that emerged from the meeting in Schembechler Hall began tailoring his new recruitment around what it believes are the school’s biggest X-factors: the names and relationships within a global alumni base.

Slowly but surely, through postgame chats at Bryce’s high school games and strategic "activations" of influential Michigan figures, the group began unspooling its vision for what a collegiate career in Ann Arbor would look like. There was a "call to the top," as Wangler described it, to facilitate a connection between Bryce and former Michigan quarterback Tom Brady, now the lead NFL analyst for FOX Sports, which blossomed into several FaceTime calls per week. They enlisted Forbes and fellow Champions Circle board member Navid Mahmoodzadegan, the CEO and co-founder of Moelis & Company, a global investment bank that specializes in strategic advice, to impress upon Bryce the kind of business opportunities that would be available to him long after his playing career ended. As momentum toward a potential flip accelerated, some of the other quarterbacks the Wolverines were pursuing "wanted no part of it anymore," Moore told me, adding, "they must have went and watched his film and were like, ‘OK, I don’t want to deal with that.’"

By framing the narrative of a local hero staying home and capitalizing on stronger "intellectual property" than Bryce might have in a shorter-term relationship with Baton Rouge, Louisiana, they scored points with the Underwoods. Just as they did by sharing the story of former Michigan tailback Blake Corum, who transformed the way Champions Circle envisioned partnerships between alums and student-athletes when he asked if some of the cash he was offered to return for another season could be swapped for equity in deals with the donors’ companies.

"The mentorship and the opportunities are going to come your way in the areas of interest that you have," Forbes told me. "Whether it’s real estate, private equity, investing, technology, startups, whatever it is, we take care of our own.

"It started to resonate with them."

Perhaps the most advantageous relationship for Bryce — and certainly the most high-profile once news of this couple's involvement hit the internet — was forged with Ellison and Zhu, whose "invaluable guidance and financial resources" were lauded by Champions Circle in a statement released the night his commitment to Michigan went public. By then, they’d been associated with Champions Circle for nearly a year, dating to the fall of 2023, when Ellison and Zhu expressed a desire to help the Wolverines add more talent at critical positions. That, in turn, prompted an eventual introduction to Bryce. From there, they were also connected with Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports and a proud Michigan alum, with all parties subsequently joining Bryce on a Zoom call.

"She cares just as much about Michigan football, if not more, than I do," Portnoy told me when asked about his interactions with Zhu. "That was awesome to hear. And it was clear that Larry was in lockstep with Jolin. ... So to hear you have, potentially, these people in your corner trying to help secure a quarterback that can change the future of the program, I was over the moon."

Not only did Zhu demonstrate herself to be a passionate and knowledgeable supporter across numerous interactions with the Underwoods, but she and her husband have also found ways to cultivate a "strong personal relationship with Bryce" that stretches beyond football, according to a source with direct knowledge of the dynamics. Ellison and Zhu continue to provide Bryce and his family with mentorship and education on topics like investing and money management, hoping that they, too, will achieve generational wealth. "They’re only too gracious of their time," the source said.

When asked to describe how it feels to interact with so many societal elites, to have one lucrative connection after another coming his way, Bryce smiled sheepishly and shied away from specifics. But it’s clear that Michigan has succeeded in threading a transformational needle even when the transactional aspect was guaranteed.

"I make the best out of my opportunities," Bryce told me. "It’s a blessing to have, honestly. Just a lot of blessings that have come into my life."

*** *** ***

There was a video that made the rounds on social media earlier this month in which Bryce can be seen celebrating Michigan’s improbable victory over Northwestern at Wrigley Field, a walk-off field goal nudging the Wolverines in front as time expired. Bryce had thrown a career-high two interceptions that afternoon, both of which came amid a frantic fourth quarter, and he was also involved in a fumbled running back exchange. He weathered 16 quarterback pressures, three sacks and two additional hits. It was, from start to finish, a trying affair.

But when the Wolverines needed him most — when their College Football Playoff hopes hung in the balance — Bryce unleashed an inch-perfect, sideline throw to wideout Andrew Marsh on third-and-10 that pushed the offense across midfield. That pass, critical in setting up Dominic Zvada’s game-winning kick, facilitated the heartwarming scenes of Bryce and his family embracing once time expired. He shared a multi-step, custom handshake with his sister Jayc; a dap and a hug with his father Jay; a kiss on the head and a long embrace with his mother Beverly, after which she gazed longingly at her oldest child the way only a proud mom can.

"He wants to be the best quarterback ever," Josh Sinagoga, the assistant quarterbacks coach at Michigan, told me. "But I think a huge piece of him doing that and all the hard work he puts in is he wants to take care of his family. And I think when you have a guy that has that as his ‘why’ and that as something that drives him, that’s a really powerful thing."

Though Bryce only turned 18 in August, less than two weeks before Michigan’s season opener, he’s uniquely aware of how his public profile impacts the people around him. Attention first orbited Bryce when he was 8 years old, by which time he’d already grown to 5-foot-3 and was competing against kids several grades ahead of him. He crossed the 6-foot mark at age 12 — passing his father along the way — and made a habit of carrying his birth certificate for when disputes with opposing coaches and parents inevitably arose. He earned his first scholarship offer from Kentucky in eighth grade.

Each family member, Bryce says, has processed his rapidly expanding stardom in different ways, though all of them are bonded by the experience. Jay is extremely proud of his son for working hard enough to be presented with such incredible opportunities; he encourages Bryce to embrace this new world like the respectful man he was raised to be. Beverly is often stressed by the realization that companies around the world want to profit off her first-born child; Bryce cautions her about searching his name on Google because she’s been known to participate in comments sections online. And the most complicated dynamics, Bryce knows, involve his beloved sister Jayc, who is five years younger than him.

"I know it’s probably hard because sometimes, at this moment in her life, she doesn’t know what’s real or what’s fake as far as intentions from other people," Bryce told me. "Whether it’s trying to get closer to me, trying to get closer just for the profit of who her big brother is or anything like that."

The relationship between Bryce and Jayc illuminates everything that’s wonderful about having a supportive sibling, even if they used to squabble as children. There were plenty of times, Bryce says, when he would bother his sister just for fun, calling Jayc into his bedroom and then refusing to speak once she arrived. Competitiveness flowed so fiercely through both of them that board games were usually feisty. Jayc tended to copy everything her older brother did.

But once Jayc matured enough to develop her own hobbies and interests, like volleyball and basketball, Bryce believed it was his responsibility to strengthen their bond by supporting those endeavors. He began attending her sporting events the same way she sat through his for years. He started texting and calling her on a daily basis because their senses of humor overlapped. Beverly began referring to Jayc as Bryce’s "sister-kid" because of how much pride he took in looking after her. And now that Bryce is living on his own in Ann Arbor, away from his family for the first time, he recognizes how much it means to Jayc whenever he visits.

"Obviously, you know, as a little sister [whose big brother is] traveling around the world during this whole journey, it’s like, hey, she’s been put to the back seat a little bit," Donovan Dooley, the founder of Quarterback University and Bryce’s private quarterbacks coach for nearly a decade, told me. "And this is a thank you, ultimately."

These days, Bryce sees his family three or four times per week, often returning to Belleville for some of his mom’s cooking. Breakfast food is always his favorite, and there’s a running joke that Jay can tell his son is due to visit because that’s when Beverly ramps things up in the kitchen. Bryce refers to his mother as a "nurturer," the kind of parent who always makes sure her son has everything he needs. He describes his father as the one who motivates and pushes him to be the best in every aspect of life.

One of the reasons why Bryce cares so deeply about his sister and parents, who politely declined an interview request for this story, is because they never ask him for anything in a world where everyone else seemingly does. He can trust that their intentions will always be pure, that they always have his best interest in mind. It’s part of what makes having them nearby for his collegiate career so special, an idea frequently reinforced by Champions Circle and Michigan’s coaching staff during recruiting pitches. Bryce says the best thing that’s happened to him since becoming the Wolverines’ starting quarterback was the day he returned home and saw Jayc wearing a shirt with his face on it.

"That’s probably, really, my favorite moment," he told me.

*** *** ***

From a football perspective, building around Bryce requires Michigan to keep infusing its roster with high-level talent while simultaneously fostering a culture that will allow him to thrive. The program’s frequent trips to Revel and Roll, a popular bowling alley adjacent to campus, accomplish both when the Wolverines host prospects for official visits.

It was about a year ago, Bryce said, when Michigan’s director of high school relations, Chris Bryant, taught him how to spin a ball like professional bowlers. "That was, like, the worst thing he could have done," Bryce told me, failing to contain his smile. Within a week, Bryce had purchased his own ball and become obsessed with perfecting the new skill. He even began competing against an uncle who participates in a weekly league. Before long, Bryce increased his high score from approximately 175 to a personal-best 278, which makes each recruiting weekend the perfect chance to simultaneously add new teammates and flex his competitive muscles.

"We don’t force him to [attend those events]," offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey told me. "We ask him to do it. And he comes over with a smile on his face and a lot of energy. I think the kids feed off that.

"He’s the best recruiter we have."

Those nights double as slices of normalcy for a freshman whose day-to-day existence is different than anyone else on the team, let alone the university’s non-athletes. He’s enrolled in five classes this semester, one of which is on Zoom, and says walking through campus probably isn’t as overwhelming as most people think — even if he’s stopped by a few of his peers each time: pictures, autographs, the like.

But eating at local restaurants is far more difficult. Lindsey remembers a stream of patrons waiting to approach Bryce when the coaches took their quarterbacks out during the offseason. Bryce was also chastised — politely — by teammates Derrick Moore and TJ Guy when he risked injury by dunking in a pickup basketball game this summer. Now, Bryce lives alone in an apartment complex on campus and spends most of his personal time scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, a self-described homebody whose reality can be difficult for others to comprehend. Even though Bryce is compensated better than most players in college football, certain aspects of his youth have been sacrificed along the way.

"He knows who he is," Michigan fullback/tight end Max Bredeson told me. "He knows what comes with it."

Bredeson, a fifth-year senior at Michigan, has played an important role in mentoring Bryce ever since the freshman arrived last December as an early enrollee. They roomed together for nearly a month in the team hotel during fall camp, and Bredeson was astonished by Bryce’s maturity and leadership skills. Each night, Bredeson would overhear Bryce drawing and re-drawing plays on his iPad in anticipation of the next day’s script. "Oh, I can’t wait for this one," Bryce would say to himself. And the enthusiasm radiated back to Bredeson, who saw similarities between the passion displayed by Bryce and that of former Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy, one of Bredeson’s closest friends.

Bryce’s obsession with personal improvement, especially as it relates to football, was instilled years earlier by his father, who repeatedly encouraged his son to identify as a hard worker even though the natural talent was obvious. It explains why Bryce came to Schembechler Hall every morning at 7 a.m. over the summer, Monday through Thursday, to work with Sinagoga, the assistant quarterbacks coach. Piece by piece, they reinstalled the offense to double down on Bryce’s already heightened understanding of a system that fused Lindsey’s ideas with things the Wolverines did when Sherrone Moore was offensive coordinator. They analyzed film from spring practice, worked on Bryce’s defensive recognition skills and utilized a floor-to-ceiling screen in the basketball facility that allowed Bryce to drop back and make reads like he was playing a real game. Then, Bryce would return to the facility two or three afternoons per week to make audio recordings of his pre-snap cadence for critique.

"He’s the type of guy that makes you better as a coach," Sinagoga told me, "because you want to maximize every second with him and you want to make sure that, you know, you’re valuing his time as well because he does have a lot on his plate."

And Bryce is prone to burnout, which is something the Wolverines’ coaches monitor quite closely. Bryce said some of his toughest moments in life came from overworking himself at a young age — approximately 8 years old through the beginning of high school — when he was routinely playing against kids several age groups above him. He couldn’t handle falling short of other quarterbacks on the field, regardless of how much more physically mature they might have been. "I would get down on myself," Bryce told me. "I would beat myself up bad." His solution was always to work out even harder with his father, immediately, though it often left him exhausted.

It’s one of the reasons why Moore stays in such close contact with Bryce, texting and calling him every day, even if they’ve already seen each other at Schembechler Hall. Moore’s biggest goal during the re-recruitment of Bryce, who won’t turn 19 until August, was to show the Underwoods how much he cares about the players as humans. He wants to help all of them reach their dreams, be that in the NFL or another aspect of life. And since Moore knows that Bryce’s primary focus outside of football is family, he routinely contacts the Underwoods — Jayc included — to make sure everyone is doing well. Significant trust was extended in both directions when Bryce decided to play for the Wolverines.

"Bryce will be the best quarterback to ever play at Michigan," Dooley told me. "Give him some time, you know what I mean? He’s a young kid, and Rome wasn’t built in a night.

"He can do some things that 99% of the world can’t."

It’s up to Moore and his staff to ensure the environment at Michigan gives Bryce a legitimate chance to deliver.

*** *** ***

On a Sunday evening in early November, barely 24 hours removed from a sluggish Michigan win over Purdue that invited more questions than it answered, Bryce received a call from his head coach. Moore knew his star quarterback hadn’t played particularly well against the Boilermakers — 13-of-22 for 145 yards, zero touchdowns and one interception — so he reached out for one of his daily check-ins.

Bryce assured Moore that he was feeling fine, that nothing was amiss despite back-to-back games without a touchdown and decidedly modest numbers all season. He was averaging 185.7 passing yards per game at that point and completing 60.9% of his passes. He had produced 11 total scores and thrown three interceptions through nine games. On that particular Saturday against Purdue, the Wolverines had turned the ball over twice and struggled to pull away from a team still winless in the Big Ten. Eventually, Bryce admitted that he’d spent the following afternoon and evening thinking about how he could perform better for the team, both as a quarterback and as a leader, before speaking to Moore.

"People always talk about, well, we need more receivers, we need more of this," Moore told me. "We need everything. And we’ve got to constantly get the best of everything [because] we’re at Michigan. And we’re going to try to do everything we can to get the best pieces in place that fit the program."

That the Wolverines and Champions Circle will be relentless in enhancing the roster was a significant promise made to the Underwoods. Both sides recognized the need for a short-term rebuild after Michigan won the national championship in 2023 and then lost 13 players to the NFL Draft, not to mention having its coaching staff gutted. But eventually, Bryce wants to contend for national titles and bring home the Heisman Trophy, goals he stated in a radio interview earlier this year. So while it’s clear that Bryce himself can still improve — and his willingness to shoulder that responsibility without deflection speaks to his selflessness — there is pressure on everyone associated with the program to make upgrades in 2026 and beyond.

Almost immediately, it became clear that landing a player of Bryce’s caliber would come with ancillary benefits that have already begun to pay dividends in recruiting. The layers of strategy and infrastructure needed to pry Bryce from LSU have formed a blueprint for how to pursue similarly talented prospects across the country. Michigan’s 2026 class, which is ranked 11th nationally and fourth in the Big Ten as the early signing period approaches, includes two five-star prospects who might have committed elsewhere had the mechanisms that reeled in Bryce never coalesced: edge rusher Carter Matthews (No. 6 overall) and running back Savion Hiter (No. 8 overall).

"That’s where that partnership comes in and the trust," Forbes told me. "We’re acutely aware of the expectations of a guy like him, both his camp and the expectations that are on our program."

Which means the Bryce-ification of Michigan must continue.

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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