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 Moore to Harbaugh 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] touring world wide throughout this entire journey, it’s like, hey, she’s been put to the again seat a bit bit,” Donovan Dooley, the founding father of Quarterback College and Bryce’s personal quarterbacks coach for practically a decade, informed me. “And it is a thanks, finally.”
Lately, Bryce sees his household three or 4 instances per week, typically returning to Belleville for a few of his mother’s cooking. Breakfast meals is all the time his favourite, and there’s a working joke that Jay can inform his son is because of go to as a result of that’s when Beverly ramps issues up within the kitchen. Bryce refers to his mom as a “nurturer,” the type of father or mother who all the time makes positive her son has every part he wants. He describes his father because the one who motivates and pushes him to be the most effective in each side of life.
One of many the explanation why Bryce cares so deeply about his sister and fogeys, who politely declined an interview request for this story, is as a result of they by no means ask him for something in a world the place everybody else seemingly does. He can belief that their intentions will all the time be pure, that they all the time have his greatest curiosity in thoughts. It’s a part of what makes having them close by for his collegiate profession so particular, an concept incessantly strengthened by Champions Circle and Michigan’s teaching employees throughout recruiting pitches. Bryce says the most effective factor that’s occurred to him since turning into the Wolverines’ beginning quarterback was the day he returned house and noticed Jayc carrying a shirt together with his face on it.
“That’s in all probability, actually, my favourite second,” he informed me.
*** *** ***
From a soccer perspective, constructing round Bryce requires Michigan to maintain infusing its roster with high-level expertise whereas concurrently fostering a tradition that can enable him to thrive. This system’s frequent journeys to Revel and Roll, a preferred bowling alley adjoining to campus, accomplish each when the Wolverines host prospects for official visits.
It was a few 12 months in the past, Bryce mentioned, when Michigan’s director of highschool relations, Chris Bryant, taught him easy methods to spin a ball like skilled bowlers. “That was, like, the worst factor he might have accomplished,” Bryce informed me, failing to include his smile. Inside per week, Bryce had bought his personal ball and change into obsessive about perfecting the brand new talent. He even started competing towards an uncle who participates in a weekly league. Earlier than lengthy, Bryce elevated his excessive rating from roughly 175 to a personal-best 278, which makes every recruiting weekend the right probability to concurrently add new teammates and flex his aggressive muscle tissue.
“We don’t drive him to [attend those events],” offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey informed me. “We ask him to do it. And he comes over with a smile on his face and a number of vitality. I feel the youngsters feed off that.
“He’s the most effective recruiter now we have.”
These nights double as slices of normalcy for a freshman whose day-to-day existence is completely different than anybody else on the crew, not to mention the college’s non-athletes. He’s enrolled in 5 courses this semester, one among which is on Zoom, and says strolling via campus in all probability isn’t as overwhelming as most individuals suppose — even when he’s stopped by a number of of his friends every time: footage, autographs, the like.
However consuming at native eating places is way harder. Lindsey remembers a stream of patrons ready to strategy Bryce when the coaches took their quarterbacks out through the offseason. Bryce was additionally chastised — politely — by teammates Derrick Moore and TJ Man when he risked harm by dunking in a pickup basketball sport this summer season. Now, Bryce lives alone in an house complicated on campus and spends most of his private time scrolling via Instagram and TikTok, a self-described homebody whose actuality might be tough for others to understand. Regardless that Bryce is compensated higher than most gamers in school soccer, sure facets of his youth have been sacrificed alongside the best way.
“He is aware of who he’s,” Michigan fullback/tight finish Max Bredeson informed me. “He is aware of what comes with it.”
Bredeson, a fifth-year senior at Michigan, has performed an necessary position in mentoring Bryce ever for the reason that freshman arrived final December as an early enrollee. They roomed collectively for practically a month within the crew resort throughout fall camp, and Bredeson was astonished by Bryce’s maturity and management abilities. Every night time, Bredeson would overhear Bryce drawing and re-drawing performs on his iPad in anticipation of the subsequent day’s script. “Oh, I can’t anticipate this one,” Bryce would say to himself. And the keenness radiated again to Bredeson, who noticed similarities between the eagerness displayed by Bryce and that of former Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy, one among Bredeson’s closest pals.
Bryce’s obsession with private enchancment, particularly because it pertains to soccer, was instilled years earlier by his father, who repeatedly inspired his son to determine as a tough employee regardless that the pure expertise was apparent. It explains why Bryce got here to Schembechler Corridor each morning at 7 a.m. over the summer season, Monday via 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 concepts with issues the Wolverines did when Sherrone Moore was offensive coordinator. They analyzed movie from spring observe, labored on Bryce’s defensive recognition abilities and utilized a floor-to-ceiling display within the basketball facility that allowed Bryce to drop again and make reads like he was enjoying an actual sport. Then, Bryce would return to the ability two or three afternoons per week to make audio recordings of his pre-snap cadence for critique.
“He’s the kind of man that makes you higher as a coach,” Sinagoga informed me, “since you need to maximize each second with him and also you need to be sure that, you already know, you’re valuing his time as nicely as a result of he does have so much on his plate.”
And Bryce is vulnerable to burnout, which is one thing the Wolverines’ coaches monitor fairly intently. Bryce mentioned a few of his hardest moments in life got here from overworking himself at a younger age — roughly 8 years previous via the start of highschool — when he was routinely enjoying towards children a number of age teams above him. He couldn’t deal with falling wanting different quarterbacks on the sphere, no matter how way more bodily mature they could have been. “I might get down on myself,” Bryce informed me. “I might beat myself up dangerous.” His resolution was all the time to work out even tougher together with his father, instantly, although it typically left him exhausted.
It’s one of many the explanation why Moore stays in such shut contact with Bryce, texting and calling him daily, even when they’ve already seen one another at Schembechler Corridor. Moore’s greatest aim through the re-recruitment of Bryce, who gained’t flip 19 till August, was to point out the Underwoods how a lot he cares concerning the gamers as people. He needs to assist all of them attain their goals, be that within the NFL or one other side of life. And since Moore is aware of that Bryce’s main focus outdoors of soccer is household, he routinely contacts the Underwoods — Jayc included — to verify everyone seems to be doing nicely. Important belief was prolonged in each instructions when Bryce determined to play for the Wolverines.
“Bryce would be the greatest quarterback to ever play at Michigan,” Dooley informed me. “Give him a while, you already know what I imply? He’s a younger child, and Rome wasn’t inbuilt an evening.
“He can do some issues that 99% of the world can’t.”
It’s as much as Moore and his employees to make sure the surroundings at Michigan offers Bryce a reliable probability to ship.
*** *** ***
On a Sunday night in early November, barely 24 hours faraway from a sluggish Michigan win over Purdue that invited extra questions than it answered, Bryce acquired a name from his head coach. Moore knew his star quarterback hadn’t performed notably nicely towards the Boilermakers — 13-of-22 for 145 yards, zero touchdowns and one interception — so he reached out for one among his day by day check-ins.
Bryce assured Moore that he was feeling positive, that nothing was amiss regardless of back-to-back video games with no landing and decidedly modest numbers all season. He was averaging 185.7 passing yards per sport at that time and finishing 60.9% of his passes. He had produced 11 whole scores and thrown three interceptions via 9 video games. On that individual Saturday towards Purdue, the Wolverines had turned the ball over twice and struggled to tug away from a crew nonetheless winless within the Huge Ten. Ultimately, Bryce admitted that he’d spent the next afternoon and night fascinated about how he might carry out higher for the crew, each as a quarterback and as a frontrunner, earlier than talking to Moore.
“Individuals all the time discuss, nicely, we’d like extra receivers, we’d like extra of this,” Moore informed me. “We’d like every part. And we’ve acquired to continually get the most effective of every part [because] we’re at Michigan. And we’re going to attempt to do every part we will to get the most effective items in place that match this system.”
That the Wolverines and Champions Circle shall be relentless in enhancing the roster was a big promise made to the Underwoods. Either side acknowledged the necessity for a short-term rebuild after Michigan gained the nationwide championship in 2023 after which misplaced 13 gamers to the NFL Draft, to not point out having its teaching employees gutted. However ultimately, Bryce needs to contend for nationwide titles and convey house the Heisman Trophy, objectives he said in a radio interview earlier this 12 months. So whereas it’s clear that Bryce himself can nonetheless enhance — and his willingness to shoulder that duty with out deflection speaks to his selflessness — there’s strain on everybody related to this system to make upgrades in 2026 and past.
Nearly instantly, it grew to become clear that touchdown a participant of Bryce’s caliber would include ancillary advantages which have already begun to pay dividends in recruiting. The layers of technique and infrastructure wanted to pry Bryce from LSU have fashioned a blueprint for easy methods to pursue equally proficient prospects throughout the nation. Michigan’s 2026 class, which is ranked eleventh nationally and fourth within the Huge Ten because the early signing interval approaches, contains two five-star prospects who may need dedicated elsewhere had the mechanisms that reeled in Bryce by no means coalesced: edge rusher Carter Matthews (No. 6 total) and working again Savion Hiter (No. 8 total).
“That’s the place that partnership is available in and the belief,” Forbes informed me. “We’re conscious about the expectations of a man like him, each his camp and the expectations which are on our program.”
Which implies the Bryce-ification of Michigan should proceed.
Michael Cohen covers school soccer and school basketball for FOX Sports activities. Observe him at @Michael_Cohen13.
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