Biff Poggi reflects on his time at Michigan, relationship of trust with Jim Harbaugh

For the last two years, Biff Poggi served as Jim Harbaugh’s right-hand man on the staff at Michigan. He was the Wolverines’ associate head coach the last two years following a decorated high school coaching career, but is now getting his first college head coach shot at Charlotte.

Their relationship was an interesting one, as Poggi told Andy Staples. In fact, Harbaugh encouraged him to be candid and honest at all times.

Poggi opened up about the trust he and Harbaugh shared on Andy Staples On3 and spoke highly of the Michigan head coach as a person. He not only helped make Poggi a better assistant, but lifted up the rest of the staff and players with his leadership style.

“First of all, Jim is a very unique person,” Poggi said. “Jim is really intelligent. Jim happens to be a football coach. He loves football. But Jim could be anything, right? He could be a physician, he could run a hedge fund. He’s really smart. And it’s a very rare characteristic to have someone who says to you, ‘I want you to tell me what you perceive to be the truth.’ So Jim was open to it.

“The things that we talked about — I don’t want to to divulge those because they’re very personal — but he took my advice. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. And that just made us, everybody in the building, that made me better, made him better, made our assistants better, made our players. I think that’s a very important person to have on your staff.”

The way Harbaugh carried himself stood out to Poggi. He didn’t want people to call him “Coach” like some other coaches do. He also didn’t want to seem like he was above everyone else — unlike someone Poggi, the former European history teacher he is, compared to someone in a position of royalty.

It’s a style he’s bringing with him to Charlotte as he looks to establish a culture.

“What happens in college football buildings is the coach, the head coach, is like the king,” Poggi said. “He’s like Charles III. He walks around and everybody genuflects … and they don’t even call them by their name. They call him coach. And everybody in the building says, ‘Well, Coach said this.’ Well, what Coach? Well, it’s always the head coach. So Jim was not like that.

“I don’t believe in running it that way. We had a really good culture there at Michigan, and we’re putting the same culture here at Charlotte.”