Kornacki: Harbaugh Looks Ahead at First B1G Media Day
7/30/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
By Steve Kornacki
CHICAGO, Ill. -- Jim Harbaugh swears he does not remember coming to the Big Ten Football Media Days in the weeks before his senior season at Michigan in 1986. He has been the focus of countless press conferences in the three decades since, and these kinds of gatherings have a way of becoming one big blur for those who spend their entire lives in the spotlight.
But as he leaned back in a sofa Thursday afternoon (July 30) at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place on the eve of addressing the media here for the first time as the head coach of the Wolverines, a black and white photo taken 29 years ago sure brought back some memories. The photo, taken by Robert Chase of The Ann Arbor News, accompanied a story I wrote back then.
Harbaugh, wearing shorts and a t-shirt with white socks and tennis shoes, is seated on the bumper of his faded red 1970 Volkswagen Beetle. He's holding a football in his left hand, and the fingers and thumb of his right hand are held next to his right ear.
"It looks like I've got a cell phone," Harbaugh said with a chuckle. "And there's the old VW. Driving this car was like Fred Flintstone. You could put your feet on the ground. The whole floor board was rusted out and about to go in. In the winter, it got so cold because it had no heater that worked. The frost, I had to scrape from the inside.
"The car got condemned. I paid $400 for the car at a used car lot on Stadium (Boulevard), the muffler fell off. And I did a really funny thing with it. The shifter knob broke, and I drilled a hole through a baseball and put the baseball over the top of it so I could shift it. And the brakes were really bad."
Jim Harbaugh in 1986 with his red '70 VW
Coach Bo Schembechler told me at the time: "The car Harbaugh has should not be allowed on the streets."
Harbaugh recalled a problem encountered in driving it to his parents' home in Kalamazoo, where his father, Jack, was the head coach at Western Michigan.
"The car was stuck in third gear," said Harbaugh. "So, I just had to keep going 55 (mph). I could brake, but it would go right back up to 55. I drove it that way from Jackson to Kalamazoo and right into the driveway without coming to a stop."
Car stuck in third gear? Just find a way to get there without hitting anything.
Broken gear shift? Drill a hole into a baseball and make do.
Harbaugh has always been nothing if not resourceful. He found a way to get the Wolverines to the Rose Bowl by beating Ohio State as he guaranteed and winning the Big Ten title in '86. He became one of the top NFL quarterbacks of his generation, got into coaching and turned a woeful Stanford team into a New Year's Day bowl team before taking the San Francisco 49ers from the ashes to the Super Bowl.
But in 1986, it was all ahead of Harbaugh. And the smile on his face and the vibrant look in his eyes as he sat on his fender-flapping VW seemed to suggest that.
Harbaugh was coming off a junior season in which he led the nation in passing efficiency and became the leader of the highest-ranked team Schembechler ever coached. Michigan was No. 2 in 1985 after beating Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl to finish 10-1-1.
Schembechler said of him at that time: "Harbaugh is going to work harder than any player. I feel he can do most anything a quarterback has to do.
"I've not bragged on him, and I'm probably not going to say anything after this. But there is no quarterback in America I'd rather go into the season with and have run my team than Jim Harbaugh."
That quote was read to Harbaugh on Thursday, and he was asked what it meant to him then.
"It meant a lot," said Harbaugh. "He didn't give out praise loosely, and when he did it really meant a lot."
Bo died in 2006, and one of the last things he did was address the Michigan football team coached by Lloyd Carr as it prepared to play Ohio State for the right to be No. 1.
"There's not a day that goes by when I don't think about him," said Harbaugh. "I now live five houses away from his old house, and sometimes I go down Geddes to the office. Sometimes I go down Devonshire. Sometimes I go down Stadium. And every time I do, I come up to the stop sign on Washtenaw and make a right. I think, 'Bo made this same drive. I wonder what he was thinking about.' Then I walk into the building, and there's the statue of Bo. That means a lot.
"I look at the picture of him in my office, and he's grabbing me by the collar (sending in a play at the Rose Bowl), and I think of the passion he had for the game he loved and the passion he had to make Michigan great. And I don't want to screw this up; I want to be great like he was. He was a great example, and I find myself thinking, 'What would he have done in this situation?' "
College football's landscape has changed so much since Jim played for Bo. The option offense Harbaugh ran has virtually disappeared. There's a national championship game. And social media is all the rage. Which brings us to our next question: What would Bo have thought of Twitter?
Harbaugh, with 292,000 Twitter followers at @CoachJim4UM to lead all college football coaches, paused before answering.
"Bo loved people, you know," said Harbaugh. "He was a great communicator with people and loved laughing. He liked people who made him laugh. He liked people who laughed easy. I think he'd find a lot of humorous stuff on Twitter. I can see him slapping his hand on his knee or his desk. And then you'd hear that laugh."
But would Bo have had a Twitter account?
"How would I know?" asked Harbaugh, rolling his eyes and sounding just like Bo for an instant.
But then Harbaugh smiled and added, "But I think he would've enjoyed it a lot. I predict he would've had an account, and I think he would've found a lot of enjoyment with it."
Harbaugh loved recalling both Bo and that old car but doesn't like dwelling on the past for too long.
"What is this, a walk down memory lane?" asked Harbaugh. "It's not relevant what I was thinking about 30 years ago. It's what these guys are feeling like going into their senior year, their junior year, their sophomore year and their freshman year.
"This is their shot; I had my shot. And we'll do everything we can now for the 2015 team. How can we make the 2015 team the best it can possibly be?"
The Wolverines finished 5-7 last year despite having a solid defense. The offense stalled too often, though.
How the quarterback performs in '15 will be just as important as it was in '86 because that's where the offense needs somebody to shift gears, lead through adversity and find a way to the end zone.
Junior Shane Morris was deemed the starter after spring practice, but since then Jake Rudock has transferred for his senior year after starting at quarterback for Iowa the last two seasons and doing a pretty good job.
We got on the quarterback topic after Harbaugh opted not to go into specifics about who might emerge as his starting tailback.
"But the quarterback position," said Harbaugh, "we've got to talk about that. Everybody in the football-loving free world loves knowing who the quarterback's going to be. That's something to talk about.
"The running back competition is every bit as important, and we'll treat it just like the quarterback position. We're going to throw the balls out there and let the guys compete for it. It will be earned and determined by who is getting the job done. And that's the same with the quarterback position."
Rudock and Morris have done all the coach has asked up to this point.
"Jake and Shane impress me the most," said Harbaugh. "Those two are focused and serious. They've both got a plan. They've both got a lot riding on this. And you can tell they're excited about it. There's a bounce in their step. They're not afraid of it; they're embracing it. And they can't wait to get out there and prove that they're the guy."
"There can only be one quarterback on the field. There's only one ball and one quarterback. It's not like other positions."
But is he in favor of naming a definite No. 1 quarterback, rather than alternating them to start the season?
"I am in favor of that," said Harbaugh. "I am in favor of somebody proving they are the clear-cut guy, the best. And we'll watch the process unfold. It's not going to be bull crap or politics.
"It's going to be who plays better. If it's clear cut, then that's ideal."
Harbaugh started the Quarterback U. legacy at Michigan. Elvis Grbac, Todd Collins, Brian Griese, John Navarre, Chad Henne and Denard Robinson continued it. Determining the guy who has a shot at joining that line is the job of the man who changed the position at Michigan.
That young quarterback sitting on the bumper of his VW bug way back when couldn't have known what was to come. But that look of confidence in his face told you something big was on the horizon.
