The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/447116
"We want to win on the practice field. We want to win in the class- room. We want to win in the commu- nity. We want to win on fall Saturday afternoons. We'll have great expecta- tions for that." A PROVEN WINNER Those certainly won't be empty expectations. Harbaugh has been a winner throughout his playing and coaching careers. He's known little else and brings such a dynamic into a Michigan situation that has expe- rienced far too little of it since Lloyd Carr retired. "I'm deeply respectful of what he has done," Carr insisted. "You look at what he did at Stanford. This guy, he gets it. He's a great motivator. He's very smart, very tough, very com- petitive. He's excited and passionate about what he's got a chance to do here. All of us who know him are excited that he's back." "It's a tremendous impact," former Harbaugh teammate Jamie Morris said. "Michigan was down. This will make Michigan rise again." As a player, Harbaugh was one of the best quarterbacks in Michigan history. He threw for 5,449 yards and 31 touchdowns, while rushing for an additional dozen. He led the Wolverines to a 21-3-1 record as a full-time starter, including a No. 2 finish nationally in 1985 and a No. 7 finish, Big Ten championship and Rose Bowl in 1986. In the NFL, he threw for 26,288 yards and 129 touchdowns over the course of a 15-year career with five teams. Harbaugh's pro plaudits in- clude AFC Offensive Player of the Year, NFL Comeback Player of the Year, a Pro Bowl selection, and induc- tion into the Indianapolis Colts Ring of Honor. Harbaugh's passion to win as a coach sizzled far before he ever landed a head-coaching job. From 1994-2001, he worked with his father, Jack — himself a former Michigan assistant under Schembechler — as a volunteer assistant at Western Ken- tucky. The son operated as a well-com- pensated professional football player, awash in on-field and financial suc- cess. He worked at the volunteer job, though, like he was fighting for his next meal, his dad recalled. "He saved our program," Jack Harbaugh insisted. "In 1993, they took our program away from us. The president called us and said, 'Pack up the equipment. There's no spring practice. It's over.' "A month later, by one vote, they kept football. But we lost 13 schol- arships, and two full-time coaches. And we lost half of our operating budget. That's when Jim stepped in. "He started recruiting, got 25 play- ers, and we turned it up over the next six, seven years. It turned us around, and 10 years later, we won the na- tional championship." Harbaugh did not get a job as Michigan quarterbacks coach in the mid-1990s, the position going to Scot Loeffler. Harbaugh eventually wound up coaching QBs on the pro level, spending two seasons (2002-03) with the Oakland Raiders, in his first paid coaching position.