Last season, the Michigan football team had the best center in college football. Olu Oluwatimi transferred before the 2022 season from Virginia football and earned the starting job, and he ended up winning the Rimington Award for the best center in college football. He spent one year with the Wolverines and is now in the NFL. This offseason, Michigan had another big name transfer come in wanting to earn the starting center job: Stanford football transfer Drake Nugent.

Nugent was one of the top centers in college football last season with the Cardinal, and he was also a team captain. He went into this season still competing for the Michigan starting job, and it was recently made official that Nugent won that battle. Michigan announced the starters along the offensive line, and Nugent is one of them. Offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore has been extremely pleased with Nugent's performance so far.

“Yeah, he’s done an outstanding job,” Moore said in regards to Nugent, according to an article from bluebyninety.com. “Just started from the spring, and he didn’t even practice but his work ethic, his workload, what he’s done to put himself in a position where he is now, and he studies like crazy. He’s a madman when it comes to the film room and wanting to know what to do, how to do it, what if this happens — sometimes overanalyzing to make sure that he got everything fixed. So he’s super locked in. He’s done a great job for us in these first two games for sure.”

Michigan football has one more non-conference game before things ramp up with Big Ten play. Nugent and the Wolverines will host Bowling Green football this weekend before starting conference play against Rutgers football. Nugent now knows he is the guy, and he has one more tuneup game before things get more intense.