USA TODAY International Edition
Michigan gets blame if Harbaugh ‘fails’
The snickering has started across college football, from coaches meetings in the Big Ten to radio shows in the South. Hey, that’s what happens when you’re Jim Harbaugh and you parachute back in from the NFL with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, when you spend nearly three years as a whirling dervish of selfpromotion and schtick but haven’t really come close to winning a national title.
Harbaugh admittedly has made himself an easy target for ridicule, and every micro-failure in his tenure is going to be magnified as the crisis that allegedly will send him whimpering back to the NFL.
But understand this: If Harbaugh decides one day that he can’t get it done at his alma mater, it will say far more about Michigan than any failure on the part of Coach Khaki.
For all the coaching miracles Harbaugh has performed in his career, there is no podcast or trip to Rome that can fundamentally change the reality that Michigan is one of the most difficult jobs among a small group of blue bloods that aspire to win national titles.
And if Harbaugh doesn’t do it, it’s unlikely anyone in our lifetime will.
Although the elitism and arrogance built into the Michigan brand suggests otherwise, there’s nothing Harbaugh can do about decades of built-in disadvantages in recruiting or the lack of relevant history to support Michigan’s claim as a national power.
Since sharing the 1997 national title with Nebraska, which was Michigan’s first since 1948, 12 programs have won the title and four others have played for it. In that same span, Michigan has two outright Big Ten titles, fewer than Wisconsin and as many as Michigan State.
In other words, if Harbaugh eventually gets Michigan into the College Football Playoff, it will be an achievement built on raising the program above its recent history and current limitations, not a fulfillment of nostalgia that no longer represents reality.
Michigan can always be a good program, but isn’t it obvious by now how hard it is to build it into a great one?
In Harbaugh’s three recruiting classes, he’s signed a mere 13 players from Michigan, only eight of which were considered elite recruits. This year, according to 247 Sports, there are only seven players of the four- and five-star variety in the state to go along with 10 a year ago, nine in 2016 and four in 2015.
By contrast, Georgia — a state with only slightly more population than Michigan (10.3 million to 9.9 million) — has 37 four- and five-star players in this upcoming class.
No wonder Harbaugh and his staff spent so much time gallivanting around the South, trying to plant the Michigan flag everywhere from IMG Academy to high school camps in Alabama.
If you can squint past the showmanship, it’s obvious that Harbaugh’s circus tricks are less about his ego and more about survival in a sport that no longer gives Michigan many advantages.
Hire Rashan Gary’s high school coach here, pull a five-star such as Aubrey Solomon out of Georgia there, and you can hustle just enough at Michigan to make it look like a powerhouse. But it’s a hustle all the same. Harbaugh isn’t infallible. His old school offensive approach and lack of quarterback development so far is fair game. His team is headed for a fourthplace finish in the Big Ten East, and his staff was humiliated by James Franklin and Penn State on Saturday night. Harbaugh, it seems, will likely go into Year 4 at Michigan without a signature accomplishment or breakthrough victory.
“Yes, there’s a standard,” Harbaugh told reporters Monday. “There’s a standard we have to play to and need to be at, but the opportunity to learn that and go through that, that’s a tremendous opportunity to get the team where it needs to be.”
Betting against Harbaugh, even at this point, would be foolish. Everything in his coaching career from the University of San Diego to the complete turnaround at Stanford to reaching a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers suggests there’s something special in the way he teaches and motivates.
Even in his first year at Michigan, he took what had become a soft program under Brady Hoke and remade it in his smashmouth vision almost instantly, winning 10 games. Before he leaves, Harbaugh is going to squeeze every ounce of potential out of the Michigan program, whatever that might mean.
If that doesn’t result in a national championship, there will be plenty of shots fired within the industry about Harbaugh’s massive salary, his odd-duck personality and the seemingly endless attention-getting gimmicks he’s pulled since coming back to college.
But at least Harbaugh, unlike previous Wolverines coaches who all made their contributions to a seven-decade run that yielded half a national title, hasn’t relied on Michigan’s crusty brand or its talent-deficient geography and hoped things would fall the Maize and Blue’s direction. He’s actively tried to even the odds and elbow his way back into the club of elites.
This is the last, best shot for Michigan to convince the rest of college football it’s still a legitimate player. If it doesn’t work, the image of failure for Michigan won’t be Harbaugh, it will be a long look in the mirror.