Thy guy sounds like an idiot savant to me. He knows football, but can't hold a conversation, and can barely dress himself:
Even Harbaugh, who doesn’t like to talk about himself, has a fascinating Jim Harbaugh story to tell.
The lantern-jawed coach was sitting at a table in a conference room at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago on a midsummer afternoon. He leaned forward on the edge of his chair, his eyes wide, as he recalled a moment from his days at Stanford.
As he explained it, he was on his way to the office when he noticed a traffic light wasn’t working; a cop was standing in the middle of a busy intersection, directing cars this way and that way. The female officer displayed such command of the intersection that Harbaugh pulled over to the side of the road, mesmerized.
For half an hour, Harbaugh sat in his car and studied the scene. He was nearly late for practice because he was so enthralled with the skill and the savvy of the traffic cop. “I like to watch people doing their job at the highest level,” he said. “I really do.”
Harbaugh also loves the familiar rhythms of a routine. In Ann Arbor, he gets his hair cut at the State Street Barbershop; his barber, Bill Stolberg, first took the clippers to his hair back in the ‘70s. After a cut, Harbaugh will then walk around downtown, happily pressing the flesh with fans, taking selfies with students and signing everything from body parts to babies.
Here in his hometown, Harbaugh appears genuinely content.
But what happens if the Wolverines, who open the season Thursday at Utah, lose three straight games at some point in 2015? The talent level isn’t high in Ann Arbor—Michigan has gone 24-32 in the last seven years in Big Ten play—so how will Harbaugh react if the team struggles, which seems likely?
But with Harbaugh—a 51-year-old man prone to emotional swings, an old-school authority figure famous for his eccentricities, a professional vagabond who has never been a head coach anywhere longer than four years—we must ask:
Will Harbaugh’s love for this school turn him into a micromanager as he tries to personally fix all that he believes is ailing Michigan football? Will he push everyone in his program—from players to administration to janitors—to the brink of both physical and mental exhaustion?
Will he, in short, start pissing people off?
Photo by Lars Anderson
Oh, how they adore James Joseph “Jim” Harbaugh in Michigan.
It’s two weeks before the Harbaugh era kicks off in Ann Arbor, and the Michigan campus clearly has a deep lust for its new coach. Outside the M-Den campus bookstore on State Street, five students—dubbed the HarBros—are dressed in Harbaugh’s game-day outfit: khaki pants, blue, long-sleeve T-shirts, whistles draped around their necks with a blue sharpie attached.
The HarBros have spent several days studying the coach’s mannerisms, and now they are posing for pictures in classic Harbaugh sideline stances—one is crouched over with his hands on his knees, another has his arms akimbo with his chest thrust forward. A crowd of several hundred quickly gathers, gripped by Harbaugh fever. As cameras flash, a game-day vibe is unmistakable.
“It took awhile to learn Harbaugh’s scowl, but I think we all got it down now,” said Nick Carey, a junior from Ypsilanti, Michigan, who is one of the HarBros. “Harbaugh is our savior. We’ve a waited a long time for him. There’s little doubt that he’s going to lead us to the promised land.”
Inside the M-Den, just past a replica locker housing Harbaugh’s old No. 4 Michigan jersey, T-shirts that read “Ann Arbaugh,” “Welcome Home Coach” and “Maize, Blue, Khaki” are plucked off the racks in handfuls. And on this day seemingly every 10th student on campus is wearing khaki pants in tribute to Harbaugh, who pulls them on every morning.
Which begs an obvious question: Why is a coach who in January signed a seven-year, $40.1 million contract so enamored with khakis? It’s part obsession and part by design.
“It eliminates the need for Jim to make a decision on what to wear every morning, so instead that time can be used to focus on football,” said Ed Lamb, the head coach at Southern Utah who was an assistant coach under Harbaugh in 2005 and 2006 at the University of San Diego, where Harbaugh also wore khakis. “Jim is basically always thinking about football. If you’re around him, get ready for that.”
You don’t have to tell Sarah Harbaugh about her husband’s total immersion in football. There were times this spring when Jim, Sarah and their three young children—Addison, Katherine and Jack—would climb into their car that was parked in the driveway of their house, which sits just five lots down the street from Schembechler’s old place.
Jim would be behind the driver’s wheel; Sarah and the kids would strap on their seat belts. Then...silence. For 30 seconds, the air would stand still.
Sarah would finally look over at Jim, who would be staring blankly ahead, mouth open, as if he had mentally blasted off from the real world. This happens frequently with Harbaugh, even in the middle of conversations, which is why he often comes across as spacey and even rude.
“Jim!” Sarah would say, and suddenly he would shake from his reverie.
“Part of him is always coaching,” Sarah said. “He can’t turn it off. He just loves it so much.”
Associated Press.
JIm Harbaugh and Bo Schembechler at Michigan.
In 1989 Schembechler, then the athletic director, famously yelled at a press conference, “A Michigan man will coach Michigan!” He was upset that basketball coach Bill Frieder, whom he had just fired, had signed a clandestine deal to coach Arizona State the next season. And over time Schembechler’s proclamation has been used against other coaches at the school who weren’t viewed as “Michigan men.”
Rodriguez, who was fired at Michigan after going 7-6 in 2010, remembers being chastised by alumni for using the word “ain’t” in a press conference.
“Where I come from in West Virginia, the first four-letter you learn after birth is ‘ain’t,’ ” said Rodriguez, who is now the head coach at Arizona. “I was just trying to be descriptive about something, but I ended up getting calls from alums about it. They thought I should be more eloquent with my word choice. But everything is so public at Michigan when you are the head coach. If you sneeze it will get out there on social media. It can be a hard place to coach, evenfor Jim Harbaugh.”
But unlike Rich Rod, Harbaugh is a Michigan man to the marrow of his bones. In Ann Arbor he’s still remembered as the Wolverines quarterback who guaranteed a victory over Ohio State in 1986 and delivered the W. He's still known as the player who left school as Michigan’s all-time leader in passing yards (5,449).
Yes, he’s one of them.
“It’s a foregone conclusion that Jim will be successful at Michigan,” said Lamb. “But along the way he’ll wipe some people out. His adrenaline will create the rise of the program, and his adrenaline will also cause problems with some people who can’t take it. Players, coaches and administrators better get on board; if they don’t, they’ll be gone.”
Nearly everyone who has orbited in Harbaugh’s solar system for a length of time possesses a whopper of an anecdote about the new Michigan coach.
Frank Beamer has one. The Virginia Tech head coach is sitting on a porch overlooking a golf course in Reynolds Plantation, Georgia, on a tar-bubbling summer afternoon—a lazy, storytelling kind of afternoon. As he puts down a glass of lemonade on a table, he says he has a tale to tell. It might just be, he claims, the weirdest damn story of his entire coaching career.
Beamer leans back in his chair and loosens a memory from late 2010. The Hokies of Virginia Tech, where Beamer has coached for the last 28 autumns, were preparing to play Stanford in the Orange Bowl. A few days before the Jan. 3 game, Beamer met the Cardinal head coach—Harbaugh—at an event at a restaurant in Miami.
“After we take some pictures, we start talking, just the two of us,” Beamer said. “Jim says over and over how much respect he has for Georgia Tech. He must have said it five times. I’m just looking at him like, ‘Are you serious?’
“Finally, I’m joking with him and I say I can’t wait to tell my team that you called us Georgia Tech. Because, you know, we’re Virginia Tech.”
Harbaugh then threw his infamous shark expression at Beamer: mouth agape, eyes on fire, looking poised to chomp. Harbaugh’s assistants have seen this look for years; he sometimes holds it for about 30 seconds without speaking, causing everyone in eyeshot to wonder what is flowing through his mind—if anything.
Beamer continued to lock eyes with Harbaugh for a few moments, waiting for him to say something, anything. It may have been the most uncomfortable silence of Beamer’s life.
“Well,” Harbaugh finally told Beamer. “I can’t wait to tell my players that you said you were going to play Samford, not Stanford!” He then turned and walked away.
More than four years later, Beamer smiles at the memory, still befuddled by Harbaugh's response. “No question, Jim is a different kind of coach,” said Beamer, whose team lost in the Orange Bowl to Harbaugh and Stanford 40-12 in what was Harbaugh’s last college game.
“He’s either crazy...or he’s crazy like a damn fox.”
Associated Press
On a recent summer evening, Jim and Sarah Harbaugh were enjoying a quiet meal at an Ann Arbor restaurant. But then a commotion erupted, and it had nothing to do with the town’s most famous resident.
A mouse was on the loose.
Harbaugh leapt into action. The single-minded coach grabbed a to-go box and began a great chase. He cornered the mouse and, displaying his trademark tenacity, eventually captured it in the styrofoam box.
“I caught it!” he yelled to the other patrons. “I caught it!”
The crowd cheered, and Harbaugh—who released the mouse across the street in an open field—once again played the role of the conquering hero. In Ann Arbor, everywhere he goes, it’s like Caesar being hailed in Rome.
And on Thursday night, Michigan’s Caesar will stride back into college football in his khakis, leading the maize and blue out of the tunnel at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City. Wolverines fans will swear that this moment will mark the rebirth of Michigan football as it should be—relevant and proud and winning again.
But then Harbaugh will be interviewed on the sideline. Eyes bulging, adrenaline pumping, he will open his mouth and...
Even Harbaugh, who doesn’t like to talk about himself, has a fascinating Jim Harbaugh story to tell.
The lantern-jawed coach was sitting at a table in a conference room at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago on a midsummer afternoon. He leaned forward on the edge of his chair, his eyes wide, as he recalled a moment from his days at Stanford.
As he explained it, he was on his way to the office when he noticed a traffic light wasn’t working; a cop was standing in the middle of a busy intersection, directing cars this way and that way. The female officer displayed such command of the intersection that Harbaugh pulled over to the side of the road, mesmerized.
For half an hour, Harbaugh sat in his car and studied the scene. He was nearly late for practice because he was so enthralled with the skill and the savvy of the traffic cop. “I like to watch people doing their job at the highest level,” he said. “I really do.”
Harbaugh also loves the familiar rhythms of a routine. In Ann Arbor, he gets his hair cut at the State Street Barbershop; his barber, Bill Stolberg, first took the clippers to his hair back in the ‘70s. After a cut, Harbaugh will then walk around downtown, happily pressing the flesh with fans, taking selfies with students and signing everything from body parts to babies.
Here in his hometown, Harbaugh appears genuinely content.
But what happens if the Wolverines, who open the season Thursday at Utah, lose three straight games at some point in 2015? The talent level isn’t high in Ann Arbor—Michigan has gone 24-32 in the last seven years in Big Ten play—so how will Harbaugh react if the team struggles, which seems likely?
But with Harbaugh—a 51-year-old man prone to emotional swings, an old-school authority figure famous for his eccentricities, a professional vagabond who has never been a head coach anywhere longer than four years—we must ask:
Will Harbaugh’s love for this school turn him into a micromanager as he tries to personally fix all that he believes is ailing Michigan football? Will he push everyone in his program—from players to administration to janitors—to the brink of both physical and mental exhaustion?
Will he, in short, start pissing people off?
Photo by Lars Anderson
Oh, how they adore James Joseph “Jim” Harbaugh in Michigan.
It’s two weeks before the Harbaugh era kicks off in Ann Arbor, and the Michigan campus clearly has a deep lust for its new coach. Outside the M-Den campus bookstore on State Street, five students—dubbed the HarBros—are dressed in Harbaugh’s game-day outfit: khaki pants, blue, long-sleeve T-shirts, whistles draped around their necks with a blue sharpie attached.
The HarBros have spent several days studying the coach’s mannerisms, and now they are posing for pictures in classic Harbaugh sideline stances—one is crouched over with his hands on his knees, another has his arms akimbo with his chest thrust forward. A crowd of several hundred quickly gathers, gripped by Harbaugh fever. As cameras flash, a game-day vibe is unmistakable.
“It took awhile to learn Harbaugh’s scowl, but I think we all got it down now,” said Nick Carey, a junior from Ypsilanti, Michigan, who is one of the HarBros. “Harbaugh is our savior. We’ve a waited a long time for him. There’s little doubt that he’s going to lead us to the promised land.”
Inside the M-Den, just past a replica locker housing Harbaugh’s old No. 4 Michigan jersey, T-shirts that read “Ann Arbaugh,” “Welcome Home Coach” and “Maize, Blue, Khaki” are plucked off the racks in handfuls. And on this day seemingly every 10th student on campus is wearing khaki pants in tribute to Harbaugh, who pulls them on every morning.
Which begs an obvious question: Why is a coach who in January signed a seven-year, $40.1 million contract so enamored with khakis? It’s part obsession and part by design.
“It eliminates the need for Jim to make a decision on what to wear every morning, so instead that time can be used to focus on football,” said Ed Lamb, the head coach at Southern Utah who was an assistant coach under Harbaugh in 2005 and 2006 at the University of San Diego, where Harbaugh also wore khakis. “Jim is basically always thinking about football. If you’re around him, get ready for that.”
You don’t have to tell Sarah Harbaugh about her husband’s total immersion in football. There were times this spring when Jim, Sarah and their three young children—Addison, Katherine and Jack—would climb into their car that was parked in the driveway of their house, which sits just five lots down the street from Schembechler’s old place.
Jim would be behind the driver’s wheel; Sarah and the kids would strap on their seat belts. Then...silence. For 30 seconds, the air would stand still.
Sarah would finally look over at Jim, who would be staring blankly ahead, mouth open, as if he had mentally blasted off from the real world. This happens frequently with Harbaugh, even in the middle of conversations, which is why he often comes across as spacey and even rude.
“Jim!” Sarah would say, and suddenly he would shake from his reverie.
“Part of him is always coaching,” Sarah said. “He can’t turn it off. He just loves it so much.”
Associated Press.
JIm Harbaugh and Bo Schembechler at Michigan.
In 1989 Schembechler, then the athletic director, famously yelled at a press conference, “A Michigan man will coach Michigan!” He was upset that basketball coach Bill Frieder, whom he had just fired, had signed a clandestine deal to coach Arizona State the next season. And over time Schembechler’s proclamation has been used against other coaches at the school who weren’t viewed as “Michigan men.”
Rodriguez, who was fired at Michigan after going 7-6 in 2010, remembers being chastised by alumni for using the word “ain’t” in a press conference.
“Where I come from in West Virginia, the first four-letter you learn after birth is ‘ain’t,’ ” said Rodriguez, who is now the head coach at Arizona. “I was just trying to be descriptive about something, but I ended up getting calls from alums about it. They thought I should be more eloquent with my word choice. But everything is so public at Michigan when you are the head coach. If you sneeze it will get out there on social media. It can be a hard place to coach, evenfor Jim Harbaugh.”
But unlike Rich Rod, Harbaugh is a Michigan man to the marrow of his bones. In Ann Arbor he’s still remembered as the Wolverines quarterback who guaranteed a victory over Ohio State in 1986 and delivered the W. He's still known as the player who left school as Michigan’s all-time leader in passing yards (5,449).
Yes, he’s one of them.
“It’s a foregone conclusion that Jim will be successful at Michigan,” said Lamb. “But along the way he’ll wipe some people out. His adrenaline will create the rise of the program, and his adrenaline will also cause problems with some people who can’t take it. Players, coaches and administrators better get on board; if they don’t, they’ll be gone.”
Nearly everyone who has orbited in Harbaugh’s solar system for a length of time possesses a whopper of an anecdote about the new Michigan coach.
Frank Beamer has one. The Virginia Tech head coach is sitting on a porch overlooking a golf course in Reynolds Plantation, Georgia, on a tar-bubbling summer afternoon—a lazy, storytelling kind of afternoon. As he puts down a glass of lemonade on a table, he says he has a tale to tell. It might just be, he claims, the weirdest damn story of his entire coaching career.
Beamer leans back in his chair and loosens a memory from late 2010. The Hokies of Virginia Tech, where Beamer has coached for the last 28 autumns, were preparing to play Stanford in the Orange Bowl. A few days before the Jan. 3 game, Beamer met the Cardinal head coach—Harbaugh—at an event at a restaurant in Miami.
“After we take some pictures, we start talking, just the two of us,” Beamer said. “Jim says over and over how much respect he has for Georgia Tech. He must have said it five times. I’m just looking at him like, ‘Are you serious?’
“Finally, I’m joking with him and I say I can’t wait to tell my team that you called us Georgia Tech. Because, you know, we’re Virginia Tech.”
Harbaugh then threw his infamous shark expression at Beamer: mouth agape, eyes on fire, looking poised to chomp. Harbaugh’s assistants have seen this look for years; he sometimes holds it for about 30 seconds without speaking, causing everyone in eyeshot to wonder what is flowing through his mind—if anything.
Beamer continued to lock eyes with Harbaugh for a few moments, waiting for him to say something, anything. It may have been the most uncomfortable silence of Beamer’s life.
“Well,” Harbaugh finally told Beamer. “I can’t wait to tell my players that you said you were going to play Samford, not Stanford!” He then turned and walked away.
More than four years later, Beamer smiles at the memory, still befuddled by Harbaugh's response. “No question, Jim is a different kind of coach,” said Beamer, whose team lost in the Orange Bowl to Harbaugh and Stanford 40-12 in what was Harbaugh’s last college game.
“He’s either crazy...or he’s crazy like a damn fox.”
Associated Press
On a recent summer evening, Jim and Sarah Harbaugh were enjoying a quiet meal at an Ann Arbor restaurant. But then a commotion erupted, and it had nothing to do with the town’s most famous resident.
A mouse was on the loose.
Harbaugh leapt into action. The single-minded coach grabbed a to-go box and began a great chase. He cornered the mouse and, displaying his trademark tenacity, eventually captured it in the styrofoam box.
“I caught it!” he yelled to the other patrons. “I caught it!”
The crowd cheered, and Harbaugh—who released the mouse across the street in an open field—once again played the role of the conquering hero. In Ann Arbor, everywhere he goes, it’s like Caesar being hailed in Rome.
And on Thursday night, Michigan’s Caesar will stride back into college football in his khakis, leading the maize and blue out of the tunnel at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City. Wolverines fans will swear that this moment will mark the rebirth of Michigan football as it should be—relevant and proud and winning again.
But then Harbaugh will be interviewed on the sideline. Eyes bulging, adrenaline pumping, he will open his mouth and...
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