Inside Michigan's epic bus ride home from East Lansing: Jim Harbaugh sings 'Edmund Fitzgerald'

LOS ANGELES — Earlier this week, Michigan Wolverines football visited Disneyland — ‘the happiest place on Earth.’ But as head coach Jim Harbaugh pointed out, from age 17 and up, at least for those who play or coach football, the happiest place is a winning locker room.

His players would add it’s a happy flight or bus ride home after a win, or a Monday morning meeting, you guessed it, also following a Wolverine victory — due in large part to the Harbaugh they get to experience.

“He’s high energy, analogies spitting left and right,” Michigan graduate left guard Trevor Keegan said of those meetings. “It’s really cool.”

Keegan has been at Michigan five seasons. He’s heard about every analogy Harbaugh could come up with. The team captain has also been around for 36 wins, the trips home and the Monday morning meetings a couple days later.

One bus ride stands out above the rest: Michigan’s trek down I-96, to US-23, onto M14 and back into Ann Arbor after a 49-0 throttling over Michigan State Oct. 21.

“The energy was a little high on the bus,” Keegan expalined. “We had an hour bus ride coming from East Lansing. It was a little quiet. All the guys were like, ‘Man, why is it so quiet here?’ We’re like, ‘We just won 49-0.’

“So we ran up there, and the bus had a microphone. So we started singing a bunch of songs.”

Harbaugh then took the mic, queued up tune a said, “This is my favorite song of all time.”

“We’re like, ‘Oh, this is going to be a banger.’ He grabs the mic, and he’s singing a song just off the phone, and everybody is like, ‘What? What song is this?’ And he sang the whole song for like five minutes. And everybody is like, ‘What song is this?”

The real toe-tapper in question was, in fact, Edmund Fitzgerald by the late, great Gordon Lightfoot, according to Michigan graduate center Drake Nugent. And yes, it’s been the coach’s favorite song since grade school, he’s revealed in the past.

Harbaugh was singing along to Lightfoot while placing the phone speaker up to the microphone so that the rest of the bus could hear. But when the phone got away from the mic, it sounded like Harbaugh was going acapella, a fact that made Nugent chuckle while continuing the story Keegan started.

“It was him up there singing. Like, what’s going on up there? It does not sound good.”

Those are the moments Michigan players will remember forever, like the ones from Harbaugh’s own head coach, Bo Schembechler, that he still cherishes to this day. And really, if Harbaugh was a better vocalist, the memory wouldn’t be as fond.

Roman Wilson on Jim Harbaugh’s humor

During Rose Bowl media availability, some reporters from Alabama and the national beat asked Michigan players about Harbaugh and referred to him as an ‘oddball.’ Senior wide receiver Roman Wilson, appreciates his coach and finds him hilarious.

“He’s like a kid, for real,” Wilson said. “He be cracking jokes like trying to get us with ‘deez nuts’ jokes. “He is out there having a good time. He really is a player, like one of us deep down.”

Wilson, a Honolulu, Hawaii, native, spent part of his Christmas at Harbaugh’s home.

“I thought he would just be inside chilling on the couch,” Wilson said. “He was just outside working on the chicken coop, chickens following him around. His actual kids were following him, and then chickens were just following him, and he was working on the chicken coop. I was, like, man, this is the most Coach Harbaugh thing I’ve ever seen.”

Wilson has also been around a while, in his fourth season at Michigan, and said Harbaugh has “definitely” evolved.

“I feel like maybe he’s getting more comfortable with his players, like really building that personal connection with us,” Wilson explained. “I don’t know if that was something we were missing when I was younger. I don’t know if I was a younger guy and didn’t see it. Being an older guy, I feel that one-on-one connection with him.”

Jon Jansen’s message to Michigan Wolverines

Former Michigan All-American left tackle and 1997 national champion Jon Jansen, the program’s radio analyst, spoke to the team this week. His message surrounded changing the narrative around U-M and his desire for these Wolverines to be the ones who are talked about for years and decades to come.

“Everyone wants to change the narrative of Michigan football or how we can’t win postseason games or we haven’t won a natty in forever or whatever it may be,” Nugent said. “They are motivated not just for that reason but motivated to solidify their legacies in Michigan football.

“Jon Jansen talked to us, and he just kept talking about the ’97 team. But he alluded to the fact that he hates talking about that team because it means something has happened since then.

“We all know that if we win this whole thing that it really galvanizes Michigan football history forever. That’s what is in the back of everyone’s mind. I think that’s probably the biggest motivating factor for us.”