The College Football Survivor Show: Jim Harbaugh’s legacy, what’s next for Michigan

Hey everybody, it might be the off season, but this is a sport that never entirely quiets down, especially now that Jim Harbaugh as widely expected has opted to return to the NFL, taking the head coaching position with the LA Chargers. Welcome to the college football survivor show where we are all about the competition to be the eventual college football playoff champion. I’m Bob Eccari flying solo today as my cohost, Chihang Jai Rajah is on leave. He’s now a new father. We wish him well.

As someone who’s gone through that, all I say is, just wait, but we’ll see him again soon. You can find us as always on X and Tik Tok at CFP Survivor Show, where we have video highlights of the show, run polls, and listen to your feedback. Please, if you get a chance, take a moment to like, rate, and subscribe to us wherever you get your shows. We enjoy your reviews. If they’re interesting, we might even get to talk about them on here.

So heading into this off season, there was a strong belief that Jim Harbaugh was going to seriously look at the NFL and likely take a job there for reasons, well, we’ll elaborate on them in a moment. But before we got a chance to talk about that, or even really breathe after the national championship game, Nick Saban announced his retirement and kicked off a whole series of events. And for us, a previous show was entirely on that topic. When you take a look at the past couple of weeks, we have an interesting situation where apparently with three of the four college football playoff teams with head coach

He also noted, and I think this is something to compliment Harbaugh, at least in his transparency in all of this, Manuel noted that he will, pardon me, Jim has always been extremely upfront with his communication regarding NFL opportunities and has been helpful with his transition in leadership. And, of course, he went on to say they’re going to do their best to keep the current staff and team together. So that finalized it, even before the charges officially announced it, the Wolverines confirmed that he was leaving.

Three of the four college football playoff teams have had now head coaching changes. Saban retired, DeBoer left Washington to take his place at Alabama, and Jim Harbaugh is now off to the NFL. It leaves Steve Sarkeesian as a monument to consistency in this high-speed era. But now we’re back to the topic we thought we were going to be on. Harbaugh’s out, and we’re going to do a fairly quick show about it. We’re going to break this into four sections. First, we’re going to look at the situation as it is now.

And it is a somewhat fluid situation, particularly with what’s going on at Michigan as we record this. We’re going to take a brief review of how Harbaugh reached the pinnacle of college football coaching success. We’re going to then look at what he’s built at Michigan and the legacy he’s leaving for whoever takes over. And then finally, we’re going to take a quick look at what’s coming next for the Wolverines, at least as of this time, which is a little bit past noon Eastern.

So let’s take a look at the situation as it is now. Yesterday, Wednesday, January 24th, rumors broke in the late afternoon from sources in the NFL that Jim Harbaugh was going to be hired as the next head coach of the LA Chargers. I’ll try not to call them San Diego Chargers. Some old habits die hard. Harbaugh interviewed with the team twice. The NFL is super transparent about that, which is a nice thing compared to the college football world. So you know what’s happening at all times, at least in these job hunts.

They were not the only team to show interest in Harbaugh in this cycle. There were questions as to whether he would be in the running for the Raiders job. And he did interviews with the Atlanta Falcons. This again, was not the first time Harbaugh had flirted with the NFL. I mean, two years ago, the Minnesota Vikings seemed to be considering him strongly as a finalist for that head Joe for that job opening. And last season, the Broncos also showed interest in Harbaugh, but he stayed. Um, and this time,

heading into the NFL, he’s going to get a significant pay increase. It’s rumored to be close to $18 million a year above what was thought to be an estimated $12 million per year in a contract had he stuck with the Wolverines. Although to be fair, when we’re talking $18 million versus $12 million, moving from Ann Arbor to Los Angeles, I love LA, but that might, oh, may cover the cost of living difference between those two cities.

So meanwhile, we got confirmation a little later in the evening. There was a release from Michigan, both from the president, but also Michigan AD Ward Manuel in that release. He noted, Manuel noted that Jim did exactly what he sought to do at Michigan, build our program to consistently win big 10 championships and compete for national championships, culminating with a record three straight outright conference titles and the national championship this year.

He did the same off the field by graduating his players and providing life experiences through mentorships, internships and team trips around the globe. Manuel went on to say, We have been discussing a new contract that would make Jim the highest paid coach in college football. In the end, he wanted to explore and ultimately decided to pursue a return to coaching in the NFL. He will always be a huge part of our rich history and will be remembered as an all-time great Wolverine, both a championship player and coach.

He also noted, and I think this is something to compliment Harbaugh, at least in his transparency in all of this, Manuel noted that he will, pardon me, Jim has always been extremely upfront with his communication regarding NFL opportunities and has been helpful with his transition in leadership. And, of course, he went on to say they’re going to do their best to keep the current staff and team together. So that finalized it, even before the charges officially announced it, the Wolverines confirmed that he was leaving.

Something that might get lost in all of this hullabaloo about his departure to the NFL is Michigan had actually acceded to one of his more notable requests, would he ever remain? Because there was ongoing negotiations on Harbaugh’s contract, should he stay with Michigan? And one of the blocks, or one of the notable points of contention was whether Michigan would be willing to grant him immunity from termination.

if he were found to be liable in two of the ongoing NCAA investigations into the program. Now, I’ll just go over those really quickly. Somehow you haven’t been paying attention to the college football season, especially if you’re listening to this show in the off season, you probably are a fairly serious college football fan. Obviously, the first one is the one that led to the three-game suspension that began the season, and that was regarding alleged recruiting violations during the COVID-19 dead period.

It’s kind of become known as the cheeseburger case, but what it was really about was Harbo was being charged about violating, they were level one violations for potentially misleading investigators. That whole thing has been moved into presumably this year, where they’re going to finally hear it. It was kind of a funny story only because the NCA Vice President, Derek Crawford, gave a very amusing statement in the off season of last year, making it clear that this case is quote, not about a cheeseburger.

So that only hammered the fact that this is now known as the cheeseburger case. The other one, the better known NCAA investigation is into the Connor Stallion’s sign stealing case. The Big Ten had already imposed that three game suspension, which ended the regular season for the Michigan Wolverines. They agreed then to set it aside. Now it’s in the NCAA arena. So once again, it is TBD.

This year, next year, the wheels of NCAA justice moved quite slowly. There was a risk that would make him and the Michigan Wolverines a, quote, repeat violator, which can cause some more severe sanctions. Throughout all of this, it was quite clear that the school, the president, the athletic director, and the coach were all just going to get past this. You know, not ignore it, but make sure it gets moved through the.

through the wheels of justice slowly into the next season so that the team could focus on this year. And one of the things I have said before to the credit of Michigan this season is their ability to stay focused despite all of this stuff happening off the field. I mean, it has, I cannot think of a situation where head coach has been suspended for six games in a season with four other coaches stepping in at one point or another as an interim head coach to go 15 and 0 and win it all.

The reason all of this was coming into this coaching negotiation was the NCAA passed a rule that did not get much attention until it came into force a year ago, January 1st, 2023. There’s now a coach responsibility provision, which makes a head coach responsible for level one violations that occur through anybody in their staff. Now this originally started as it’s understood because of issues in basketball.

The head coach would say, oh, I didn’t know we’d bribe the player. I didn’t know we did something wrong. It was one of my assistants that did it. And it would be that kind of plausible deniability that kind of made people raise their eyebrows. Those staffs were quite small. So it seemed absurd that those head coaches didn’t know what was going on. Now applying it to a college football program, particularly a P five or should say P four blue blood program, like Michigan with a staff that

easily could get close to 100 people to expect the head coach knows everything that’s going on with every staffer seemed a little bit rough and why that came into play here historically a lot of these contracts including Harbus contract with Michigan said that uh included a so-called strict liability clause if he were given a four-cause termination So in other words, it’s boilerplate language that coaching contracts say that the coach could be fired if they committed an nca violation

Now, as we just said, if you have a staffer, and I’m not saying that’s exactly what happened in the Connor Stallions case. I’m just gonna say that. We’re gonna talk more theoretical here. If you have a staffer that you really aren’t in that close contact with due to however the hierarchy is in your organization, and they commit a level one violation under the new rules that were went into effect in January of 2023, you too committed a level one violation. And under some of these head coaching contracts, you can be terminated for cause, and they don’t have to pay your severance.

That’s a bone of contention that a lot of agents and a lot of head coaches have been now negotiating in a lot of their new contracts. So he wanted, and I believe this was broken by Yahoo a few weeks ago, he wanted to add the idea that if such a thing were to occur, an NCA violation would be ruled against him. A three person panel in Michigan would then have to rule whether or not it is enforceable against him and his contract. So he basically wanted to create an option for the school to ignore.

the NCAA violation in terms of his employment status at the university. I think we’re going to see more of those. And that was something that he had been negotiating and then apparently Michigan acceded to it mere hours before he took the Chargers job. There has been some question if that was intentional on the part of Michigan, whether some people in Michigan just didn’t want him to return. I’m going to say that’s unlikely in my opinion. I mean, the guy just won a national championship. He is a beloved coach.

whether or not he can maintain the level of success in the next following few seasons was an interesting question we’ll get to in a moment. But certainly it seemed like that was something that would have been nice, but ultimately in the end of it, it seems like he wanted to move on. It is notable to say that some people have asked, was the NCAA pressure getting to Harbaugh? Did he wanna leave Michigan while the getting was good before?

the hammer of the NCA came down at all. That’s happened before. I mean, Jim Trestle was pushed out of Ohio State because of some of the seemingly quaint things that occurred under his tenure like tattoo gate. Now that would not be a problem at all under the current NCA rules. Some people might make a comparison to when Pete Carroll left USC. Some people thought with the Reggie Bush stuff that was going on that he left before the hammer came down. I’m gonna say, and I’ve said this before,

I don’t believe that was the case in that situation. And although their personalities are quite different, Harbaugh and Carroll have one thing in common. And both of them had a fairly transparent desire to get back to the NFL, not because they didn’t like coaching college, but because they felt like they had unfinished business. Obviously Carroll went back to the NFL under his own terms. He had suitors year after year and finally found a situation with the Seahawks, which recently let him go. But

was able to go there, run the team his way, and finally win a Super Bowl. Harbaugh himself, in his four years with the San Francisco 49ers, went to the playoffs three times, made it to the Super Bowl, lost to his brother, and clearly wants to go back there and have another go, especially now that he’s achieved what he set out to at Michigan.

So with all of this said, I wanted to take a second to take a look at how he got to the pinnacle of college football now that we are seeing him return the NFL. I mean, he was obviously a player at Michigan who went and played in the NFL. In fact, he wrapped up his career with the Chargers back when they were in San Diego, backing up Brian Leaf and getting in at least I believe 11 games playing for them. While he was still a player in the NFL, again, I think he’s always had an eye on coaching,

helping his dad a bit. His dad was of course at the time, the head coach of then FCS Western Kentucky. Then he was helping his dad as an NCA certified unpaid assistant coach, recruiting, helping recruiting players that ended up helping his dad win the FCS n