Bryce Underwood’s public image has long leaned squeaky-clean. Elite recruit, diligent student-athlete, quietly devoted boyfriend to rising YouTuber and Instagram creator Day’iana “Diana” Smith. For most of 2025, the pair sprinkled affectionate emojis across each other’s timelines, turning Valentine’s Day roses and a lavish May date night into viral proof that Michigan’s future QB1 could juggle romance and NIL millions without a hitch.

Lately, though, the digital trail looks colder. Fans who track the couple’s every move noticed on Monday that Underwood and Diana no longer follow each other on Instagram, a sharp pivot from months of highly visible online affection. Scroll back a few weeks, and their profiles still showed reciprocal follows as well as comments like Underwood’s trademark string of heart-eye emojis on Diana’s modeling shots. Today, those breadcrumbs are gone, and neither side has offered an explanation.

That missing mutual follow, seemingly small to outsiders, matters in the influencer-athlete ecosystem the pair inhabit. Social-media connections are the modern equivalent of wearing someone’s varsity jacket. Unfollowing signals an unmistakable chill. For Underwood, whose every off-field gesture is parsed by Wolverine fans already anxious about quarterback succession, the optics invite speculation that the relationship has hit a rough patch just days before his first game.

Context only deepens the intrigue. Throughout winter and spring, Underwood called Diana his “biggest hype girl,” reposting her photo dumps and dropping comment-section hearts while she returned the favor with captions like “the chosen one” beside his workout clips. The couple had become a soft-launch marketing asset, humanizing a teenager suddenly worth multi-million-dollar NIL estimates.

Neither party’s camp has explained anything officially, and a quick check of TikTok and YouTube shows no breakup confessionals, at least not yet. But unfollowing speaks louder than press releases. And the social silence is telling enough to spark “are they or aren’t they?” threads across Wolverine message boards. Whether this is a temporary cooling-off or a permanent split, Underwood’s next public appearance, be it at a game or in the comment section, will say plenty about how college football’s most scrutinized prospect plans to balance autumn playbooks with matters of the heart.

Underwood secures Michigan’s huddle

Michigan made it official on Monday afternoon, posting “Official: @19bryce.__ has been named our starting QB” on its verified football Instagram account, punctuating a weekend of national reports that true-freshman Bryce Underwood had won the job over transfer Mikey Keene and veteran Davis Warren. Coach Mikey Keene told reporters the decision was “earned,” noting that the five-star’s command of the huddle and rapid grasp of the playbook left “no doubt” by the close of camp.

The announcement lands just hours after fans noticed that Underwood and longtime girlfriend Day’iana Smith no longer follow each other on Instagram, a tiny but telling change documented in the earlier piece. That sudden drop-off in public PDA now sits in stark contrast to Michigan’s celebratory post, which has already drawn tens of thousands of likes and a flood of comments. In the influencer-athlete ecosystem Underwood inhabits, one public relationship seems to be cooling as another, the quarterback’s bond with an entire fan base, heats up rapidly.

For the Wolverines, the timing is ideal. Underwood’s first start arrives Saturday against New Mexico, and the program would rather headlines center on his arm than his algorithm. Yet the dual story lines are impossible to separate. Every fresh highlight clip will share screen space with social-media sleuthing about his private life, ensuring that the same online platforms that amplified his romance now magnify his responsibility. If Underwood delivers on the field this fall, the gridiron applause could drown out any background whispers about unfollows and emoji counts.