Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan legacy? Wins, controversy and an extraordinary 9

• Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior WriterJan 24, 2024, 08:15 PM ET Close Senior writer for ESPN The Publication and ESPN.com 2-time Sports Emmy winner

• 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year

Legacy.These days, that word feels like it carries a different meaning when it pertains to the lexicon of college football. OK, throughout these strangest of college football times, every word feels like it brings an altered definition from the one it was assigned oh many years ago. Like, I dunno, 2019? As Jim Harbaugh leaves the college game for the NFL Cinematic

Universe, finishing his trilogy of shifts from school to the big leagues– Michigan to the Chicago Bears as a QB in 1987, Stanford to the San Francisco 49ers as a head coach in 2011 and now Michigan to the Los Angeles Chargers, also as head coach– we discover ourselves charged with defining the legacy of a distinctly different sort of college football character.Earlier this month, that was an easy task when it concerned Nick Saban(the GOAT!)and even Jerry Kill(the scrappy program

reviver ). However when it pertains to the Michigan Man who just left Michigan, it’s not that simple. Absolutely Nothing about Jim Harbaugh ever is.Editor’s Picks

1 Associated He is as befuddling as he is beloved. Misconstrued by a minimum of as many people as he is revered. If the college football world were a Facebook page, we would all– Wolverines and otherwise– have to click the relationship status line that reads, “It’s made complex.”

I’m willing to bet that the majority of people checking out these words today might believe Harbaugh’s period in Ann Arbor was a fairly brief one. However it was not. He invested 9 complete seasons on the sidelines of The Big House. That is 3 times longer than his first head-coaching stint at San Diego and more than two times as long as his 4 year terms on The Farm and up the road with the Niners.Those same individuals may think he struggled strongly during the very first half of his near-decade at Michigan. Again, he did not. His groups published three 10-3 records and balanced more than nine wins each year over his very first five seasons, making 5 straight New Year’s bowl berths.That perception of failure originates from that handful of games in which Harbaugh did

struggle, the 18 losses that countered those 48 wins, most of which was available in the only games anybody worn blue truly cares about, a pile of defeats versus Michigan State and Ohio State and a 1-4 record in those postseason games through 2019. His 2020 pandemic season brought an abysmal and abbreviated 2-4 mark.But the three years given that represent what might effectively be the greatest multiple-season run in the Wolverines’145-year history: a record of 40-3 with three straight wins over Ohio State, three consecutive Big Ten champions, 3 College Football Playoff appearances in a row and, this year, and the program’s first unanimous nationwide title given that 1948. Carmen Mandato/Getty Images All of that time, all 9 years, was punctuated with a relatively limitless litany of stories that felt bizarre as they happened; however with the advantage of even some short hindsight, we can now see them as pictures of a man with willingness to buck the college football system.Call it pioneering. Call it wild. Just as long as you wind up calling it all unique.Since June 2015, his very first year on the job, our brains have been scorched with the vision of shirtless 51-year-old Harbaugh slinging passes during his coaching staff’s “Summer season Swarm”barnstorming football camp trip. However what you may have forgotten considering that is the mission behind that trip, holding exercises in Florida, California, Pennsylvania and– gulp– Alabama. His QB skins game was held in Prattville, about 90 minutes from Tuscaloosa. Even now, the Yellowhammer State message boards are crimson with anger.It was two years later that he led his team into Rome. The one in Italy– not the ones in Alabama or Ohio– where Harbaugh sang opera and talented Pope Francis with a maize and blue helmet.There is no word to explain the inner beauty that shines through the eyes of our Holy Daddy and his words …” Pray for me “pic.twitter.com/doUpeajuRp!.?.!— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM )April 26, 2017 In the years that followed, the Wolverines walked alongside their coach onto the beaches of Normandy and through the streets of Paris and South

Africa. The journeys were pricey(the tabs were picked up by Michigan donors )and were criticized by non-Wolverines as grandstanding. However at worst, they were unconventional, and as Harbaugh himself explained, college basketball

programs had actually made similar trips for decades.Then, as all of us keep in mind, there were the goofy recruiting tales. Harbaugh mimicking DJ Khaled’s” How’s organization? Boomin’! “to try to lure a California defensive back. Harbaugh climbing up a tree in a recruit’s front yard to show his own NFL-honed upper-body strength. Harbaugh sleeping on the sofa of top-ranked kicker Quinn Nordin so they could have a conversation the minute the recruiting dead duration ended at midnight that night, only the first of a multitude of pajama parties he ‘d prepared for that winter.And we have not even discussed the khakis.But while we were all splitting jokes about the coach’s quirkiness, all of those silly stories showed to be building blocks for what was to come. The barnstorming into the Deep South and out West? This year’s championship game lineup included 8 players from Georgia, seven from Florida, five from Tennessee, a minimum of one agent from Louisiana and South Carolina and even one from Alabama. Those overseas journeys led to days of live coverage on “SportsCenter “and, in the words of Wolverines assistant coach Mike Hart,”A lot of employees asking us,’Where are we going next year?”‘And when it comes to those kooky social-media-saturating tales from the recruiting trail, Harbaugh’s inaugural 2015 Michigan haul was ranked 40th by ESPN. By 2019, it was up to 8th, having finally made a run through the SEC skill blockade. The next year’s group included Blake Corum, Roman Wilson and the core of this year’s CFP-winning roster. Stacy Revere/Getty Images However, that class came with an accompanying NCAA examination into hiring infractions that contravened of the restrictions implemented since of the pandemic. This is also the part where Harbaugh critics will remind us of his 2 different three-game suspensions this season, with investigations ongoing into both the recruiting violations and, of course, the sign-stealing mess that does not reveal any, ahem, indications of disappearing anytime quickly. Even now, after the male who was CEO of the program implicated of carrying out a way-too-nuanced signal-deciphering network, has actually packed up his khakis and headed back to the pros, the cloud hangs over the program.So, we discover ourselves once again looking at that trisyllabic word that, these days, brings a lot more heft and complication than its six little letters would suggest.Legacy.If you fluctuate every day humming”Hail to the Victors,”then the Jim Harbaugh legacy might very well be simple to you. He got home vowing to return his university to college football’s top rung, and he did just that. There’s a big ol’ silver and gold prize that was simply put in Schembechler Hall to prove it. However the reality is there will not be a duration at the end of his block-M chapter up until the private investigators are done and their

last reports read aloud. When that will take place, nobody understands. When it does happen, it might all show to be much ado about nothing. But it likewise might go in an extremely various, extremely destructive direction.Then, and only then, will we really know what the Jim Harbaugh tradition will be. All we know for particular right now is that he will not be in Ann Arbor when that happens.See? Complicated.