HARB’ KNOCKS
Firecracker coach has Michigan in hunt, NCAA bigshots on edge
Jim Harbaugh is here to save college football from itself. Well, Michigan first, then college football, though maybe he could do both at the same time. The second-year Wolverines coach has turned the once drifting program into a national powerhouse again, while pushing those at the NCAA who run the sport. “We are at times some of the most archaic, stuffy and stodgy of any of the sports out there. We are almost worse than baseball,” said Joel Klatt, FOX lead college football analyst and former Colorado quarterback. “Jim Harbaugh questions the establishment and he presses those buttons and boundaries and we are in desperate need of that because I believe college football is in a precarious spot. We are in desperate need of a college football commissioner and Harbaugh asking these questions will hopefully bring us to that point.” Harbaugh has pushed the limits with the use of satellite camps that have rankled the SEC elite, and newage recruiting, which even includes his appearance in a rap video. What, you don’t expect to see Nick Saban on the next Drake album? Harbaugh’s antics have raised the profile of the sport, and have made Michigan a national title contender again with many picking the Wolverines to win the Big 10 and crash the college football playoffs.
“If you look at what he did in his first year and what they have coming back, there’s obvious reason to be optimistic about what they can accomplish this year,” said Kirk Herbstreit, ESPN analyst and former Ohio State quarterback. “I still would make the argument that the roster that he inherited in these first couple years will be the least talented roster that he coaches while he’s in Ann Arbor because of the way they’re going to recruit, or they do satellite camps …
“He’s going to recruit his tail off and he’s going to get very, very high-caliber skill players at receiver, running back and quarterback. I personally think they’re about a year away.”
The Harbaugh hype will take at least a one-week hiatus with Michigan opening against six-touchdown underdog Hawaii on Saturday afternoon, while some of college football’s heavyweights do battle in an unprecedented opening weekend of extraordinary matchups. The college football playoff committee gets some of the credit, thanks to the increased scrutiny on strength of schedule forcing teams to look outside the cupcakes they would annually dominate before conference play started.
There are many to choose from, but Alabama and USC might be the showcase game of the five-day college football orgy that began Thursday night. Along with pitting the topranked Crimson Tide against the Trojans, it also has Alabama’s controversial offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin going against the team that fired him — at an airport — in 2013.
“I do think that deep down there is something a little bit special for him going up against USC,” Herbstreit said. “Just to remind the USC folks what they let go … So it will be there. How it will impact the game, I don’t think it will. But I think privately deep down, I think Lane Kiffin’s incredibly fired up to have an opportunity to coach Alabama offensively against USC.”