Jim Harbaugh built what he came to build at Michigan; now he’ll try again in the NFL

Because we tend to project our fantasies onto people who — by virtue of their blend of skill, mindset and work ethic — are wholly unlike us, the question most frequently asked of newly hired football coaches is this: Are you going to stay here forever?

So it was when Jim Harbaugh was introduced as the head coach at his alma mater at a press conference on Dec. 30, 2014, two days before the first games for a new concept called the College Football Playoff. The first question — No. 1, right out of the box — came from The Wolverine’s Chris Balas: “You’ve already got guys in the NFL saying that this is a stopover for you. Can you talk about this as a destination job?”

Harbaugh tossed some red meat to the maize and blue masses at the end of his answer. But in the middle of his answer lay the most honest portion of the response. The middle of that answer, plus his refusal to make a truly definitive statement at the end, told us this day would come.

“I’ve coached now at the University of San Diego. I’ve coached at Stanford University, at the 49ers for four years,” Harbaugh said that day. “I look at it like I’m going to construct a home or as an  architect. I think of myself as more of a construction guy. You build a home, and hopefully it’s a great cathedral. Then afterwards, they go tell you to build another one. There’s some dirt down there, go build another home. I feel like that again. I’m at that point where even though you’ve done well and built some pretty nice homes, you have to do it again, and you have to prove it again. But I would really like to live in one permanently. That’s what I’m very hopeful for here.” 

But the builders rarely make one of their creations a forever home, because their instincts usually tell them to build another one. Harbaugh is headed back to the NFL. He’ll coach the Los Angeles Chargers now.

He came to Ann Arbor and found a pile of dirt that had been heaped upon a once-proud program. His project experienced delays. A rival outfit kept handing him setbacks at key moments. At one point he almost got thrown off the job by the people paying him to build. Then the rival outfit’s CEO quit and handed off to an underling. A new crew offered better ways to pour foundation and build walls and started making real progress. But then there were accusations from the outside of corruption, and he had to let a job foreman take over the project briefly.

But through all that, Harbaugh did indeed leave a great cathedral where that pile once sat. The Wolverines closed the four-team playoff era of college football with a national title. Now they’ll start a new era for the sport with a new leader — most likely current offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore.

Harbaugh did the job he came to do. And now he’s off to do another one. Was it a stopover? Of course not. It was a completed assignment. Did the handoff go entirely smoothly? Of course not. The conflict between the NFL hiring calendar and college football’s new recruiting/free agency calendar ensured it would be as awkward as possible. 

But even with complaints that Harbaugh wasn’t hard-selling class of 2025 recruits in the two weeks since winning the national title, he leaves Michigan’s program in an undeniably better place. And that’s true even if the dual NCAA cases the sprung up during Harbaugh’s tenure result in punishments for the program. The Wolverines were also-rans when Harbaugh arrived. Now they’re champions, and they have a repeatable blueprint that should allow them to remain in the upper echelon of college football.

It’s easy to forget how bad Michigan was when Harbaugh arrived. The 2014 team got blanked by Notre Dame and lost to Minnesota, Rutgers and Maryland. Michigan’s lone win against Ohio State in the previous 11 meetings had come against an interim staff in 2011. Michigan State had won six of the previous seven meetings against the Wolverines.

Harbaugh immediately made Michigan better. Sure, there was some initial trouble with the snap, but the balance in the Michigan State rivalry was restored. In his early tenure, the Wolverines won the games they were supposed to win and lost to Ohio State.

Which was, of course, the problem. 

In 2018, Michigan entered The Game at 10-1. The Wolverines were 4.5-point favorites in Columbus. They lost 62-39. They looked hopeless. Every Buckeyes crossing route brought a fresh hell for a Michigan defense that refused to adjust.

Then Urban Meyer resigned, Ryan Day took over and Day’s Buckeyes whipped Michigan 56-27 in Columbus in 2019. That prompted this question, which Harbaugh took as an insult but which was entirely fair given the circumstances.

Jim Harbaugh was insulted when I asked him what the difference is between Michigan and Ohio State. pic.twitter.com/U2s091hvDM

— Jordan Strack (@JordanStrack) November 30, 2019

It seemed then that Harbaugh never would find the answer. But as it turned out, the answer was tear down the half-built house and start rebuilding again.

We know now that pretty much everything that happened in the 2020 football season was an anomaly. The mix of the pandemic, the Big Ten and Pac-12’s decisions to cancel the season and then change course and wildly varying rosters from week to week did not provide an accurate picture. But in the moment, Michigan administrators didn’t know that. They only knew that Michigan stunk that season and, combined with an 0-5 record against Ohio State that didn’t go to 0-6 because that season’s edition of The Game got canceled, that was enough to consider firing Harbaugh.

But instead of firing him, athletic director Warde Manuel rewrote Harbaugh’s contract. Here’s what Manuel said in a press release announcing the new deal: “I continue to believe that Jim is the right man to lead our program in pursuit of Big Ten and CFP championships. Our program didn’t achieve at a level that anyone expected this year, but I know those setbacks will drive the coaches, players and staff moving forward.”

What the release didn’t say is that Manuel cut Harbaugh’s pay in half, and the only way to get back near his old paycheck was to beat Ohio State, win the Big Ten and make the CFP. Also attached to the return was a promise by Harbaugh to revamp the staff. Which he did. He went younger. Out went defensive coordinator Don Brown and in came Mike Macdonald with a college version of the Baltimore Ravens scheme. Harbaugh hired more aggressive recruiters. Perhaps most importantly, he moved Moore from tight ends to offensive line, where he could begin training the most critical members of the construction crew.

It is here that if we look at Harbaugh’s resume the one anomaly makes more sense. His tenure at Michigan is twice as long as his other coaching stops, but when we realize that he essentially had two entirely separate tenures at Michigan, it tracks quite nicely. 

The second tenure began in January 2021. Harbaugh arrived at 2021 Big Ten football media days with a reduced salary, a terrible record against the Buckeyes and the same old questions. Naturally, someone asked about beating Ohio State. “We’re going to do it or die trying,” Harbaugh said.

No one died. That November, Moore’s line mauled the Buckeyes up front and Michigan turned a losing streak into the start of a winning streak. In the aftermath, Harbaugh said something that will chase Day forever unless Day can pull off his own reversal of fortune in the rivalry. “Let’s move on with humble hearts, take the high road,” Harbaugh said. “But yeah, there’s definitely stuff that people said that spurred us on even more. Sure. Sometimes people that are standing on third base think they hit a triple. But they didn’t.”

That could have been the end of our house metaphor right there, because Harbaugh met with the Minnesota Vikings two months later about their head coach opening. Michigan was a McMansion then, but not nearly the edifice it would become. So the Vikings did the Wolverines a favor by hiring Kevin O’Connell instead. Afterward, Harbaugh recounted a conversation with Manuel in an interview with Mitch Albom of The Detroit Free Press.

“I called Warde and I asked him if he wanted me to be the head coach,” Harbaugh told Albom. “And he said, ‘Yes, 100 percent.’ And I said, OK then. That’s what I want to do.’

“And I told him, ‘Warde, this will not be a reoccurring theme every year. This was a one-time thing.”

This line will go down as Harbaugh’s version of Nick Saban saying he wasn’t going to be the Alabama coach just before he became the Alabama coach. It definitely wasn’t a one-time thing. Harbaugh flirted with the Broncos last year before they hired Sean Payton. This past season, as the Connor Stalions sign-stealing accusations turned into a circus and Michigan plowed unbothered toward a national title, it seemed inevitable Harbaugh would test the waters again. If he won a national title, why wouldn’t he want to try to add a Super Bowl win? The builder wants to build, after all.

And that’s why Harbaugh was never going to stay at Michigan forever. He isn’t wired to be Bobby Bowden or Dabo Swinney. Where Saban could satisfy himself adjusting his style as the codes changed around him, Harbaugh has to have that one unfinished project in the back of his mind. What competitor wouldn’t? He came seven yards from winning a Super Bowl with the 49ers. Imagine how that must gnaw at the man — a glorious building that just needed the final trim pieces attached. Then it got razed to the ground. Plus, he hasn’t forgotten who cut his pay and nearly gave up on him.

So now Harbaugh has stuck it to those who he believes wronged him. Even better, he has a chance to try to build that Super Bowl championship skyscraper again. 

And if cared for properly, the structure Harbaugh made out of that pile of dirt in Ann Arbor can stand forever.