![]() At Stanford, Harbaugh coached Andrew Luck, who was the runner-up for the actual Heisman in 20, got drafted no. In San Diego he coached Josh Johnson, who was named a finalist for the 2007 Walter Payton Award-the FCS equivalent of the Heisman Trophy-and became the first Toreros quarterback to reach the NFL. Harbaugh then made three straight NFC championship games in his first three years as an NFL coach, taking the 49ers to an appearance in Super Bowl XLVII.Īt each of these stops, Harbaugh’s strength was coaching quarterbacks. Stanford went 1-11 the season before Harbaugh took over the Cardinal in 2007 they went 12-1 during Harbaugh’s final year on the job in 2010. In his first head-coaching job, at FCS-level San Diego, Harbaugh led the Toreros to a 15-1 record in conference play, two consecutive 11-1 seasons, and a pair of Pioneer League titles. In January 1995, he came a few inches away from leading the Colts to a Super Bowl. He was a 1987 first-round NFL draft pick, and went on to earn a Pro Bowl nod and stick in the league for 14 seasons. As a college quarterback at Michigan in the 1980s, he was named Big Ten Player of the Year and led the Wolverines to the Rose Bowl. What happens if the program savior continues to be eccentric and average?īefore accepting the Wolverines job, Harbaugh had excelled at every step of his very public career. Yet after three seasons in Ann Arbor, Harbaugh’s Michigan tenure has been the least impressive of his four head-coaching stints. ![]() ![]() He had come to lead the Wolverines back to relevance, and nobody questioned him. He is Michigan’s prodigal son, and returned to his alma mater before the 2015 season as a football star turned coaching star with a history of resounding success at every level. Harbaugh’s antics primarily served to ingratiate himself with recruits or draw attention, which also ingratiates a coach with recruits.Īfter all, Harbaugh could initially do no wrong. Winning in college football is something like 75 percent about recruiting and 25 percent about everything else. Why doesn’t Jim eat lion?Īt first, this behavior was easy enough to explain. Jim prefers cows-hence his belief that milk and steak are “natural steroids”-even though cows seem pretty nervous, too. ![]() (“All right, we need an activity, and then a type of uncomfortable pants.”) Most recently, Harbaugh made headlines for reportedly telling a player that eating chicken is bad for one’s health, because chickens are “nervous birds” whose weak demeanor will infect the human body when consumed. All of these are, on some level, Mad Libs. In his three years at Michigan, Harbaugh has made all sorts of headlines: for drinking milk like beer for wooing a kicker by sleeping at his house for babysitting a recruit’s younger brother for baking a recruit a birthday cake for speaking at the high school commencement of a top recruit for going to high school classes with recruits for singing the national anthem at a Lil Dicky concert for borrowing a chain from Migos for gifting the Pope a pair of Jordans for coming out in support of Darth Vader for drilling the main character on Detroiters in the back of the head with a football for arguing that Judge Judy should be appointed to the Supreme Court for announcing a presidential bid with Wale as his veep for getting way too into pregame routines with his quarterbacks for running up the score on Rutgers for using a play I described as “the Wolverine Centipede” for taking his team paintballing in Italy for forcing his children to run drills to prepare for trick-or-treating for using a rare off day to hold the first-down chain at a high school football game for working out in khakis for swimming in khakis for being incredibly pasty in khakis. Tim Tebow is America’s most famous baseball player, and Jim Harbaugh is America’s most famous college football coach.
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