Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh offers no apologies, gets back to work
Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh was close to being the Minnesota Vikings head coach, but he’s not. He’s now back in Ann Arbor with a bounce in his step, telling Jon Jansen on his recent In The Trenches podcast he was thrilled to return.
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Yes, he was seriously interested in the NFL, he said. At the same time, he also can’t wait to see what his 2022 Michigan team does, because he knows he has a special group returning.
“For me, it went back to Feb. 3, 2013 when our team in San Francisco got within five yards, one play of winning the Super bowl,” he said of the NFL itch. “Two years after that I left the 49ers to come to Michigan, signed a seven-year contract. Those seven years were up, and I wondered if that was the time or if there would be a time to go back and try to finish that.”
He has no regrets about it, he added.
“I explored it. I don’t apologize for exploring it, nor do I apologize for wanting to come back and be the head coach for the University of Michigan,” he said. “So — and I guess lot of words were used like tumultuous offseason, weird offseason. There was so much going on offseason. But if the word tumultuous means we got a lot of momentum and we’re having a blast here at Schembechler Hall … that’s what we’re having.”
Michigan will start spring practice Monday, Feb. 21 and go Wednesday and Friday, as well. They’ll take spring break off and return March 7, finishing with the April 2 spring game.
The group is off to a great start and motivated to defend the Big Ten title, Harbaugh said. But he’s just as thrilled to have signed his contract and to be able to coach them.
“I’m very excited about it; very grateful to Warde Manuel and the University of Michigan and just having a blast,” he said. “The guys, as you can imagine, have just a ton of momentum coming off the season we had. Players have really been getting after, it the entire squad. In fact, it was first week back and had a conversation with [strength coach] Ben Herbert. Just watching every guy, they’re flipping sleds — doing high level stuff.
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“… I finally walked up to Herb and said, ‘they look tremendous.’ He said, ‘this has been the best week of my professional career.’ That’s a pretty long career, Herb. That’s tremendous. Why is that? He said, ‘’just look at these guys. They’ve come back, not one guy was like, ‘we didn’t have a long enough break,’ or why do we have to do this or do that?’”
They were as jacked as he was, he said, to pursue the College Football Playoff once again. While chasing the Super Bowl would have been great, too, Harbaugh now has one focus.
“Let’s go win college football’s most ultimate prize, the national championship,” he said. “That’s what we’re completely focused on and want to do.”
“Last year, our team was outside the top 25 when the season started. We went from 25 to three. Maybe it’s farther to go to get from three to one; it may not be. But we’re going to attack that, and that’s the goal.”
