I generally think raps/songs about football teams are pretty lame. This isn’t much of an exception, but it’s not out of the norm for Jim Harbaugh, who doesn’t look totally out of place in the video like a lot of 50-year-old football coaches would. I guess that Saved by the Bell acting experience came in handy yet again.
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I am not much of a rap fan … but I smiled as I watched this. Harbaugh’s goofy enthusiasm is infectious. I imagine his mix of intensity and playfulness is something to see first-hand.
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I love Harbaugh the coach. I love Harbaugh the recruiter. I love Harbaugh the promoter. I love Harbaugh the master marketer. I don’t like the rapper. I think this is something he has to tone down a lot. He doesn’t need to do trash like this. If this was Eminem, that’s another thing. It would turn into an opportunity for a relevant person/artist to associate with UM. Personally, I’d rather Harbaugh just starts kicking ass. This gets a little ridiculous at times and I can’t wait for football to actually start.
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My thing with Harbaugh and these kinds of things is: Winning fixes everything. I don’t care if he does stuff like this as long as he wins football games. I’m inherently not a fan of giving guarantees like he did about beating Ohio State when he was a player, but he beat Ohio State. If he can win games with all these rather harmless “distractions,” then I don’t care. Now there’s a difference between cheating, covering things up, etc. (Hugh Freeze, Baylor, PSU, etc.) and what he’s doing. Those aren’t distractions, but serious rules infractions and rather inhumane behavior in some cases. If Harbaugh stays on the right side of the rules/law, then more power to him to have fun and be goofy.
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I understand what you’re saying but winning includes beating your rivals. He’s kind of set himself up for a season where he can afford to lose no more than 1 regular season game. If he wins his games against Hawaii and Rutgers but loses to MSU and OSU it’s a greatly disappointing season. I haven’t even mentioned the Iowa game which will be difficult. I’d just prefer the guy tone it back a bit on these kind of “look at me” things and beat the Buckeyes and Spartans first… and I think he will.
Thunder, it surprises me a bit that you’re not a bit uncomfortable with this, especially when you have criticized players for showboating in the past. Many of them have been successful while doing it.
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I don’t see it as showboating, though. I’m guessing he didn’t come up with the idea for the video, so Bailey (or someone else) probably approached him and asked him to do it. He’s said before that his default answer when someone asks him to do something is to say “yes.” I don’t think appearing on “Saved by the Bell” was showboating, I don’t think Shaquille O’Neal starring in “Blue Chips” was showboating, I don’t think J.J. Watt being on “The League” is showboating, etc. It’s a Michigan-themed song/video, and our coach happened to agree to play a part in it.
Now, if he were talking crap about other schools, saying Michigan is going to win the national championship, posting Vine videos of himself doing stand-up comedy, etc., THEN he would clearly be making an overt attempt to bring attention to himself. Playing a role in this rap video isn’t on that same level.
As for beating the Buckeyes and Spartans, time will tell. The thing I don’t like about that line of reasoning is that you only get one chance per year to do those things. No, he didn’t do it in his first year, but Michigan was coming off a 5-7 season with some questionable talent at some key positions. He hadn’t beaten the Spartans or Buckeyes before then, so does he have to wait from January 2015 to November 2016 (almost two full years) to do any of this “extracurricular” stuff? If he beats the Buckeyes and/or Spartans, some people will probably say “Great, you’re .500 against those guys. Maybe you should wait until you have a winning record against them.” So now he has to wait until November 2017?
I’m a high school coach. It’s on a much lower level, and I get that. But if somebody said to me, “Oh, you shouldn’t write for a website until you beat your archrival” or “You shouldn’t take up playing the guitar until you win a state championship,” I would find that to be pretty ridiculous. Football lasts all year, but it doesn’t need to take up 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We keep talking about how Jim Harbaugh is the hardest-working (or one of the hardest-working) coaches in America, traveling across the country for satellite camps, taking “vacation” to Peru for charity, etc…and yet he spends a few hours or a day shooting a rap video, and now he’s losing concentration on building his football program? I just don’t buy that.
I saw a video of Dan Mullen wake-surfing the other day on ESPN. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not criticizing him at all. But if Mullen spends a day wake-surfing while Harbaugh spends a day shooting a Michigan rap video, are those two things that different when it comes to building your program? I wouldn’t expect anyone to say Dan Mullen shouldn’t go wake-surfing in his spare time. So I don’t see a reason to criticize Harbaugh for standing there in his M hat and khakis and yelling “Who’s got it better than us?”
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Great post Thunder!
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