I'm disappointed. Jim had an opportunity to be a legendary college coach at Michigan. He had established the momentum over the last three years winning the B1G and the NC. With the west coast teams joining the conference he could have continued to build the program into national prominence (Champions of the West and all). The program was in a position to increase recruiting of 4 and 5 stars. Now he will be remembered as the coach that brought the program back after some bad years, but not as a legendary coach at Michigan. I know the NCAA is after him, but is it worse than what was happening in SF with the administration and ownership before he left to come to Michigan. His personality gets him into these kinds of conflicts and that is going to go with him wherever he goes. At least at Michigan he had a home with solid support from the boosters. He was not going to be run out of Ann Arbor. I understand the desire to win a Superbowl like his brother, but the NFL is a completely different situation. Do NFL players consider the opportunity to learn from a coach? Do they consider the team culture and choose the team they play for because it has a brotherhood type of atmosphere? I think in the NFL it is more about bringing attention to themselves and getting their paycheck. With the NIL it may be changing in college football, but there is still the motivation of learning from the coaching staff, program culture, and winning important games and championships that prepare and set up the players to go to the NFL. Once you're in the NFL what is the motivation? I guess Harbaugh is well aware of the NFL environment having been there before. It is going to be tough for him. I appreciate what he did at Michigan and wish him well. I am disappointed he made this decision. He could have achieved greatness as a college coach.
I still don't put this on Jim. But I admit - and I wish the "Harbaugh was gone regardless" people could admit - that no one except Jim Harbaugh himself knows what was going through his mind.
There's been a lot of "noise" in the media about this, and not much signal, but we can sift through the noise and distinguish some facts... A lot of the noise is understandable: rival coaches want Harbaugh to leave for the NFL, and after his comments about getting the players paid, the NCAA wants him gone as well, and probably a lot of advertisers and TV people also, so their mouthpieces in the media have been on overdrive about this issue, almost constantly since he's been in Ann Arbor.
We
do know that the administration dragged their feet all year on renewing his contract, and, according to Bacon, the ball was in Warde Manuel's court this time. I.e. Harbaugh's attorneys sent their version over and were left hanging for months, even as the team kept winning, and ultimately won it all, despite an unprecedented smear campaign going on all season & sidelining him for three key games.
That's
basically Warde telling Harbaugh to "FUCK OFF" ... and I think Jim's comments about wanting to stay in Ann Arbor but needing to "feel the love" referred to that.
As far as him wanting to win a Super Bowl, I think sure, he wants to win a Super Bowl. I'd like to win a Super Bowl. I think if you asked anyone on the planet "
Would you like to win the Super Bowl?" They would say "
YES." even if they did not know anything about football. But did Harbaugh want to win a Super Bowl at the expense of leaving Michigan? I don't know. Nobody knows except him, and they're fooling themselves if they think they do.
If Moore works out - which we're really just hoping he does, because he has no established track record here as a head coach, only in the limited "interim" sense - then no harm, no foul, I guess, although the way Jim left will always be a blemish on the program.
But if not, if this is just another rash decision (like hiring Juwan Howard despite his lack of HC college experience) by an egomaniac AD who can't handle managing his relationship with successful coaches, then the same guy who's driving our basketball and baseball teams in the ground has just done the same thing to the football team, with zero fucking repercussions for any of it.
And I'll say this: A LOT of people could do Warde's job. But no one else has proven they could do what Jim Harbaugh just did - win a national championship at Michigan a talented, but not Top 10 talented team.
