I get the feeling some of the posters here never been to UM, or at least not in the past decade
About 2/3 of the students don’t attend football games. Enthusiasm has definitely waned in recent years. In addition, half of undergrads come from out of state. While you can’t get by your 4 years without overhearing a discussion of football now and then, you might not hear of it in class, and you can easily find friends who don’t give a damn about it. Academics certainly is not subservient to sports, unless you major in sports management. This isn’t high school, or florida state.
While there’s a movement that wants to see football downsized, as they recognize the athletes have nothing in common with real students, IMO it’s more easily ignored altogether. Look at the relative budgets - $120 million vs the $3 billion brought in by the last fundraising campaign. This isn’t LSU where 25% of the budget is football
Reality is though that even the Ivys give admissions preference to athletes. If you want sports truly and complete separate from the school, consider chicago or cal tech
I can tell you the annoying thing is when you return home or leave campus and mention you’re from UM, someone else who’s never been there will bring up Harbaugh. To the general public, unfortunately it’s true that UM is a ‘good school’ but they know far more of football than the med school etc. To employers and grad schools though, your degree will be be very impressive, cause that’s what matters to them.