Tag: Jim Harbaugh

Michigan 30, East Carolina 3

Football is back! All is right in the world when it’s football season. In another few days, the NFL season will be back and we can all enjoy Heaven for a few months. It has been a long off-season for me on an individual level, and this is also a chance to break away from the 2023 Season Countdown and get back into a groove with writing about various topics.

This was a boring matchup. I like seeing different opponents, but with East Carolina, there were no storylines. It’s not a geographical matchup. When I looked through the roster and coaching staff, there was no crossover. East Carolina doesn’t recruit in the state of Michigan. No transfers or ex-staffers from Michigan. There was no angle. The most interesting aspect going into the opener, aside from seeing who starts for Michigan, was . . .

. . . Peacock. The Peacock stream sucked. I signed up for Peacock on Friday because there’s really no other reason to do so earlier. And I don’t really care about the expense. I’ll pay $5.99 to watch a Michigan game. But when I’m paying for it, I expect a good product. When I paid for cable, I expected ESPN and FS1 and BTN to give me a good product. Otherwise, I’ll just turn off the volume and think through it myself. I don’t need Mike Tirico and one of the Simms brothers to tell me what’s happening on the game. Peacock actually complied – presumably on accident – when there was just no audio for several minutes. The fourth quarter feed got blurry, too, but maybe that had something to do with my local internet. But Peacock also cut out a play, there was no pregame show, the halftime show was boring, and oh yeah . . . the Simms kid isn’t exactly top-notch. If I wanted crappy analysis, I would watch some of the ex-Buckeye talking heads like Josh Perry and Joey Galloway.

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Michigan 43, Purdue 22

Hail to the Victors! It is truly incredible what this team, these coaches, and these players have accomplished over the past couple years. Michigan is 25-2 in that span. Back in the olden days, a 13-0 record would be good enough to be voted a national champion. Regardless of what happens in the College Football Playoff, this team is a national championship-caliber squad. Furthermore, Jim Harbaugh has cemented himself as one of the best coaches in modern football. If I had to name a top three, it would include Harbaugh, Urban Meyer (ugh), and Nick Saban (ugh again). Harbaugh has taken over struggling program after struggling program and made them elite, from Stanford to the San Francisco 49ers to Michigan. A lot of coaches are in the right place at the right time, including guys like Jimbo Fisher, Gene Chizik, Ed Orgeron, etc. to make once-in-a-lifetime runs and then fall off precipitously. There are very few who can consistently redirect a program wherever they go, and Harbaugh is one of them.

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2022 All-Big Ten Teams

The Big Ten released its all-conference teams over the past couple days, and here’s a look at the honorees for Michigan:

FIRST TEAM
RB Blake Corum (Coaches, Media)
C Olu Oluwatimi (Coaches)
OG Trevor Keegan (Coaches)
OG Zak Zinter (Coaches, Media)
DL Mike Morris (Coaches, Media)
DL Mazi Smith (Coaches, Media)

SECOND TEAM
QB J.J. McCarthy (Media)
OT Ryan Hayes (Coaches)
LB Junior Colson (Coaches)
DB D.J. Turner II (Coaches)

THIRD TEAM
WR Ronnie Bell (Coaches, Media)
TE Luke Schoonmaker (Coaches)
LB Mike Barrett (Coaches)

COACH OF THE YEAR: Jim Harbaugh
RUNNING BACK OF THE YEAR: Blake Corum
DEFENSIVE LINEMAN OF THE YEAR: Mike Morris
KICKER OF THE YEAR: Jake Moody

On the Return/Non-Departure of Jim Harbaugh

Jim Harbaugh came back to Michigan. He did that quite literally by returning from St. Paul, MN, after an interview with the Minnesota Vikings.

I think Jim Harbaugh is such a polarizing figure that anything he does is going to be tweeted out, broadcast, and inspected to an unfathomable degree. This is a guy who took off his shirt at a satellite camp, and the meme has lasted for half a decade.

Picture the headline: MAN TAKES OFF SHIRT.

Shocking.

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On Jim Harbaugh

IS JIM HARBAUGH LEAVING?

The obvious answer is I don’t know.

SHOULD JIM HARBAUGH LEAVE?

Jim Harbaugh came to Michigan to right the ship and return the program to national prominence. Rich Rodriguez went 15-22 at Michigan. Brady Hoke went 31-20, which isn’t terrible overall, but things were going downhill. But that’s a 46-42 record over seven years. Jim Harbaugh is 61-24 with a Big Ten championship and a College Football Playoff appearance. Has he won a national championship? No. But that’s the only feat he hasn’t accomplished, other than some personal goals he might have (winning 100 games, becoming the winningest coach in Michigan history, etc.). Ultimately, seven years is a pretty long tenure for any coach by modern standards, and especially if you consider he was at both Stanford and the San Francisco 49ers for four years each.

Harbaugh’s career is essentially the envy of any coach ever. He’s won in the NFL and gone to the Super Bowl. He’s won in college and coached a team to the playoffs. He’s taken broken and abused programs and turned them into perennial double-digit winning programs.

But if you want to win at the highest level, that’s the NFL.

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