Ann Arbor, Mich.

Weapons-grade intensity has returned to this college-football town—and the locals love it.

“Now that we’re into spring ball, we’ve been bunkered down at the hotel,” new Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said of his coaching staff in his office last week. “Everyone’s wife is shopping for homes, because we don’t have time to look.

“At 5:45 each morning, we meet in the lobby and eat breakfast there—oatmeal, whatever they’ve got. Then we carpool in to Schembechler Hall—I still don’t have a car—and we go until midnight, carpool back to the hotel, get up and do it again.”

Michigan’s disappointing decade has fueled its fans’ hunger for Harbaugh’s old-school discipline. Since the start of the 2008 season, the Wolverines have a 46-42 record. Put another way: Over the past seven years, college football’s all-time winningest team has been bested by Northwestern.