CHICAGO — When media members were handed a copy of the Big Ten 2017 Football Prospectus full of notes about the conference’s 14 teams this week, the first page featured a statistical anomaly that looked like a typo.

On a chart detailing the teams’ returning and departed starters, one could have thought that Michigan had the figures mixed up. Every other team in the conference returned 10 starters, 11 teams returned at least 15 and four returned 18.

The Wolverines were listed to return six starters, less than half the totals of all but one team (Illinois).

Inexperience is arguably the biggest storyline surrounding Michigan in 2017. With effective wholesale changes in the receiving game and secondary and 18 starters gone from a season ago, the Wolverines have been ranked as the youngest team in the country by multiple websites. If the newcomers aren’t up to speed, Michigan’s upward trajectory under Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh will go down a peg.

But for a blueprint on thriving with a youth movement in a sport traditionally reliant on experience, the Wolverines don’t have to look far. Ohio State entered last fall as the nation’s youngest team, and turned in an 11-2 record and a College Football Playoff appearance.

A year later, the Buckeyes remained adamant that age and experience are only obstacles when teams let them be obstacles.

“It’s a very unique dynamic, but there’s no scientific formula that says because you’re 18, you’re going to go 8-4 on the season,” said Ohio State center Billy Price. “We had guys that were very confident in how they played, confident in their ability and confident in what the coaches tell them, and that’s where you start to see guys play really well.”

In Ohio State’s corner, of course, were a series of elite recruiting classes that ranked second, third, seventh and fourth, respectively, from 2013-16 in the 247Sports composite team rankings.

The team lost 12 players to the 2016 NFL Draft, but returned plenty of talent.

“Talent, talent, talent, coaches, leaders. That’s it, that’s the only thing I can tell you,” Buckeye linebacker Chris Worley said. “I just remember at the beginning of the year everyone was saying some crazy stuff about us. That we’d be lucky to win eight games, some stuff like that … but we knew what we had, and we were just excited to go out there and play and prove people wrong.”

Added Price: “When you put an athlete in a good position to dominate and he’s confident in the game plan, he could be 19, 18 or 25, but he’s going to go out and dominate. I think that’s what happened to our players.”

Michigan faces a tougher challenge thanks to smaller 2014 and 2015 recruiting classes, but has posted back-to-back top-six classes n 2016 and 2017. And though Ohio State might not want to admit it, that’s an influx in talent that should minimize any obstacles that inexperience could create.

“Places like The Team Up North, they’re always going to get the top-tier talent because they’re a top-tier program,” Worley said. “It doesn’t matter about all the age stuff as long as you can go out there and play.”

And according the defensive lineman Tyquan Lewis, it’s not only high school recruiting rankings that can close the gap. Lewis recalled the Buckeyes’ 2014 national championship team, another young team that was made even younger when quarterback and Heisman frontrunner Braxton Miller was lost for the season to injury.

Instead of falling off as a team, J.T. Barrett and then Cardale Jones showed that they too possessed Miller’s leadership experience.

To Lewis, this is a common trait that doesn’t get talked about. Sometimes, players are ready for their chance all along, and it’s more common than you think.

“A lot of guys don’t get to see practice, don’t get to see what guys can do,” Lewis said. “Nobody knew how good J.T. was (in 2014), but we knew it. We knew what kind of leader and worker and person he was, but we knew.

“Good teams have a lot of those guys waiting for their turn.”

Michigan’s season remains a mystery, but as Ohio State showed in 2016, legitimate programs don’t need rebuilding seasons anymore.