The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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38 ■ THE WOLVERINE 2017 FOOTBALL PREVIEW hands-on recruiting, there are few like him. That's no recent phenomenon, either. His dad, former Michigan assistant coach and former Western Kentucky head coach Jack Harbaugh, saw that first hand, when Jim dove in to help Jack's program one winter. "I would marvel at this guy," Jack Har- baugh stressed. "He was playing for the Chi- cago Bears at the time, and they all knew him as the quarterback of the Bears. Here he is, passionately talking about Western Kentucky University and how these youngsters were going to fit into the program." The younger Harbaugh has much more to offer these days, and his manner of presenta- tion and involvement has certainly not less- ened with the block M behind him. He's stayed overnight at the homes of re- cruits, gone go-karting with a prospective Wolverine and family members, attended high school classes with others and helped younger siblings with homework. He's not afraid to go anywhere, including the heart of SEC country, and it's paying off. Michigan has signed 16 players from that conference's footprint over the past two years. "We want to get into the south and start a pipeline — Alabama, Georgia, Florida, all of that," Michigan early enrollee J'Marick Woods, an Alabama native, said in the spring. "There are ballers up here, but there are also a lot of ballers down south. There's a good brand of football down there." No territory is sacred, for someone reach- ing for the mountaintop. 5. A Staffing Surge The number working at Schem- bechler Hall has grown exponentially under Harbaugh. Analysts and operations person- nel, player personnel staffers and more have taken Michigan into the Alabama strato- sphere in terms of those having input on the football program. Some of those Harbaugh has installed have had direct ties to players who since followed their coaches or fathers to Ann Arbor. Others simply joined a burgeoning squad of workers looking to leave no stone unturned in advanc- ing Michigan football. It's as if Harbaugh's presence — combined with a too long span of underperformance — opened up heretofore unconsidered pos- sibilities regarding what Michigan could do to compete under NCAA guidelines. "Michigan had lagged a little bit in terms of being progressive about utilizing positions to help us win football games," Jansen said. "When you look at what Nick Saban has been doing at Alabama, what Les [Miles] did at LSU — their programs were so much big- ger in terms of the staff they had, the people that were filling those positions." If there's to be a competition, Harbaugh isn't arriving under-equipped. He's also pro- viding the sort of opportunities that will put high-level staffers into other programs. DJ Durkin went from Harbaugh's defen- sive coordinator to the head coaching job at Maryland, for instance. Harbaugh brought in Don Brown and kept rolling with the nation's No. 1 overall defense in 2016. "At some point, you've got to hitch your wagon to someone," Jansen said. "If you're going to get anywhere, you've got to get with a Nick Saban, a Jim Harbaugh, a Les Miles, whoever it is to then take the next step. If you're going to hitch your wagon to some- body, you've got to hitch it to somebody who is going to push the envelope, somebody who is going to be successful. "Look at what Jim's done. We've lost as- sistant coaches every year, and he continues to fill them with high-level NFL coaches or what people are assuming are the next great college coaches. Those people are flocking to places like Alabama and Michigan. "They know they're going to be success- ful. And that success is going to translate into more opportunities for them, away from Michigan. "Maybe one of those guys comes back. We've got to have somebody who fills his spot when he leaves. The more people he mentors in the coaching world, it just in- creases the pool of people we can pick from at a later time." 6. Satellite Camps Harbaugh challenged the entire foot- ball world in the summer of 2016, he and his crew going out in the month of June and conducting or appearing at 40-some football camps across the United States and beyond. Michigan's staff taught the game, ran drills and represented the program in a high-profile manner. They hit the mega-talent bases in the U.S., such as Florida, Texas and California. They ruffled feathers in SEC country by going into With 22 years of defensive coordinator experience and 12 years as a college head coach (94-45 overall record), Don Brown is one of many Harbaugh highly regarded assistants. PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN