Being the empathetic person I strive to be, I awoke this morning deeply worried about the mental health of University of Michigan’s first-semester students. The trauma they endured last night watching their beloved Wolverines football team nearly lose their season opener to Kalamazoo’s unranked Western Michigan University must have caused them considerable angst.
After U-M quarterback Bryce Underwood’s Hail Mary attempt appeared to end the game in defeat, officials restored one second to the clock. Underwood then threw a miraculous 47-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass to JJ Buchanan, giving Michigan a 13-12 victory, although controversial officiating put a damper on the celebration.
Detroit Free Press sportswriter Shawn Windsor apparently shares my concerns.
“Obviously, Western Michigan fans were crushed. Not as obviously, Michigan fans were crushed, too, though if they haven’t felt its weight yet, they will, with some even feeling a rumbling in their guts as I write,” Windsor warned.
Windsor’s diagnosis was clear: winning ugly had inflicted genuine psychological damage.
My concern for the mental health of U-M’s freshmen isn’t unfounded. Michigan’s premier public university plans to cover traditional letter grades for first-semester freshmen in its College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, more gently easing new students into academic life.
The plan will go into effect in the fall of 2027. It is intended to relieve pressure on freshmen and help them “start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals,” the university said.
Under the plan, students will still receive letter grades and instructor feedback, and the grades will be recorded internally by the school for such purposes as compliance reporting, academic advising and eligibility for honors and awards. Student transcripts, however, will reflect either “pass” or “no credit.” First-semester grades will not factor into grade-point averages.
U-M’s policy was first reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), which noted that other universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wellesley College, and Swarthmore College, have policies identical or similar to Michigan’s pilot program, which curiously is limited to LSA students.
If U-M’s policy catches on, perhaps CHE might consider launching a sister publication called The Chronicle of Kumbaya Education.
Admission to the University of Michigan, long famed as the Harvard of the Midwest, once denoted considerable accomplishment. That was especially true for in-state residents, for whom an acceptance letter meant securing an elite pedigree at an $18,000 bargain-basement rate while out-of-state peers shelled out more than triple that amount. With an overall acceptance rate that has plummeted toward 16% and incoming high school GPAs averaging 3.9, Michigan presumably assembled a student body for whom competitive drive was woven into their DNA.
Yet the same institution that demands near-flawless high school GPAs abruptly decides that seeing a “B-minus” on a December transcript constitutes an unbearable psychological trauma.
I’m not alone in my skepticism.
Neetu Arnold, an education-policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute, noted on X that the change is “part of a larger problem,” telling The Chronicle of Higher Education that the policy is “an attempt to address preparation gaps that could have been identified had Michigan required standardized tests in admissions.” Author and critic Walter Kirn took the administrative logic to its natural conclusion: “Next stop: students needn’t attend classes or turn in any work.”
The irony is that General Motors doesn’t run on pass/fail. At GM, salaried employees are reportedly subjected to a rigid forced-ranking performance system that requires managers to place roughly 15 percent of their staffs in the bottom two performance categories. While Ann Arbor’s academic deans are busy shielding 18-year-olds from the trauma of a B-minus, GM is culling its ranks and showing veteran white-collar workers the door with unceremonious 5 a.m. emails.
GM’s system apparently isn’t stress-free. A former GM engineer told Phoebe Wall Howard, author of Substack newsletter Shifting Gears, about a manager forced to select an employee for a low ranking who was ultimately terminated: “The manager went into the bathroom and puked. It’s a lot of stress.”
Clearly, Ann Arbor’s administrators haven’t gone far enough.
U-M says its grade-covering experiment is intended to foster “a culture of connection and collaboration—rather than competition.” If the university is truly committed to protecting first-semester LSA freshmen from psychological harm, that philosophy should extend to all campus endeavors—especially competitive athletics. I would wager that not every starting linebacker at Michigan is grinding through quantum physics or generative AI.
Out of respect for U-M’s fragile student body, the Big Ten should rally together and embrace a pass/fail model on the gridiron. Rather than subjecting players and fans to the acute trauma of an unforgiving scoreboard, my Solomonesque approach ensures everyone emerges validated.
Under my proposed rules, any team that scores a touchdown and converts the extra point must immediately surrender the ball until the opposing team matches the score. A passing grade will be awarded to any squad that finishes within a single possession, eliminating the toxic hierarchy of winners and losers.
As for postseason play, the Rose Bowl can simply be staged in back-to-back shifts throughout January, guaranteeing that every single program in the 18-team conference receives a bowl ring, a ceremonial commemorative football, and a transcript stamped with an unblemished “P.”
Football terminology would naturally require a systemic overhaul to safeguard player self-esteem. Interceptions would be redesignated as “cross-roster collaborative receptions,” fumbles rebranded as “unscheduled possession sharing,” and a devastating blindside sack softened into an “unsolicited kinetic convergence.” Missed field goals wouldn’t be failures—merely “expressions of alternative trajectory.”
If the Big Ten program catches on, perhaps it could be adopted by the NFL, transforming a brutal collision sport into a restorative circle of mutual trust and respect. The revised rulebook would alleviate decades of acute trauma endured by long-suffering Detroit Lions fans—finally securing one of the league’s oldest franchises an administrative pass straight to the Super Bowl.