Kirk Herbstreit addresses if the bar should be lowered for Jim Harbaugh, Michigan

Kirk Herbstreit was a guest on the Colin Cowherd podcast earlier this week and took on questions about the Jim Harbaugh era at Michigan. There is a lot to take away from the interview on the tenure of the Wolverines head coach. But in the end, Herbstreit is not a fan of lowering the bar for Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines.

Herbstreit’s initial reaction

When Cowherd asked if he was wrong for not seeing Michigan on the same level as the rival and Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State, Herbstreit spoke on the first reaction everyone had to Harbaugh’s hiring.

“When he got hired, and you look at what he did at Stanford and you look at his legacy and what he did as a player at Michigan and you combine all of that, there’s no one, including you who said that was (just) a good hire, Herbstreit said. “I tell you what, he’ll get them eight wins. No way when they made that hire and he stepped to that podium, I was like oh man. New ten-year war with Urban Myer and Jim Harbaugh. It’s on!”

As Herbstreit noted, college football was fired up about the Harbaugh hiring. He had successful coaching stints in both the NCAA and in the NFL. Harbaugh returning to his alma mater just added to the home run nature of the hire. At Stanford, he increased the team’s wins in every season since he took over. He also had a winning record against USC, who was a football powerhouse at that time. In the year before he took over at Stanford, the team went 1-11. In his final season there they were 12-1 and won their first-ever BCS bowl game.

And his time in the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers, Harbaugh led the team to three straight conference championship appearances. And in his second year, he led the 49ers to the Super Bowl, where he faced off against his brother John Harbaugh and the Baltimore Ravens.

Herbstreit’s expectations for the Wolverines

In that same response to the Cowherd, Herbstreit expanded on his expectations and how high he has the bar for the Michigan program.

“I will have expectations of Michigan not to be Texas — they’re an eight-win program, for the most part, that’s kind of what they’ve been,” Herbstreit said. “Michigan has not been like that, and so I have much higher standards. I keep waiting. I keep thinking that this is the year.”

Harbaugh helped the team get back to his winning ways with his arrival. Aside from last year, they have finished each season with no less than eight wins. And that is the problem Herbstreit is alluding to. Michigan in the ’90s and 2000s was consistently in the national championship picture. They would bring in high-end talent every year in recruiting and had an extensive list of NFL-ready talent to come out of that school. But Harbaugh has failed to keep the team competitive with the elites of college football. He has yet to beat Ohio State, since becoming the Wolverines head coach and has a bowl record of 1-4.

Herbstreit closed the segment with these final thoughts:

“They’ve got to recruit at a very different level, and they’ve got to develop at a different level, and I still think they can. I’m just kind of dumbfounded, to be honest with you, that they’re not at a much higher level with [Harbaugh] at the helm and in charge.”

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