Skip to main content
Michigan

Podcast: Could Michigan have kept Jim Harbaugh? Discussing his legacy, the next man up, more

clayton-sayfieby: Clayton Sayfie01/25/24CSayf23
On3 image
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

On this episode of The Wolverine Podcast, Clayton Sayfie and Anthony Broome share their thoughts one day after head coach Jim Harbaugh left Michigan for the Los Angeles Chargers, assess what’s next and more.

Watch this episode in the video player above or on our YouTube channel. Listen in the embed below or search ‘The Wolverine’ wherever you get your podcasts.

RELATED
• Born and raised to coach Michigan, Jim Harbaugh’s happy mission culminates with national title
• Michigan dealing with tampering as NIL efforts turn back toward the current roster

“I wrote a column this afternoon surrounding the topic that Jim Harbaugh was basically born and raised to coach at Michigan,” Sayfie said. “Born December 23rd, 1963 in Toledo, spends time around the game of football basically his entire life. Said that … at age four — he says 4.5, which is very specific, he definitely remembers this exact moment — that he would play as long as he can, then coach, then die. He’s done two of the three; the other one’s going to happen to everybody.

“But he did it at Michigan for so many years. Ari Wasserman from The Athletic had a great tweet last night, which was, there are all these saviors of the program. Right? Scott Frost comes to mind as one. But a lot of them, they come back — they’re the prodigal son — and they fail. Whether it’s the pressure or just the fact that, what are the odds that a guy who happened to play there is also going to be really the savior of a program? One, the fact that you need a savior means the program was down. It’s hard to get them out of a rut like that. You could go on and on for the reasons why these guys failed.

“But Jim Harbaugh is one of the few that didn’t fail. In fact, it was a success at Michigan. And maybe it didn’t go exactly how you thought it was going to with championships immediately, but I think when you look back at the landscape of college football, the inherent speed bumps you have at a place like Michigan, being in the midwest, where there haven’t been many national champions over the last 20, 30 years. It’s impressive, and it’s incredible, and Michigan is lucky that he did come back, because I don’t know where this program would be if he didn’t. But just the fact that this ‘savior’ thing really did come to fruition.”

“It’s hard to do,” Broome said of Harbaugh’s run at Michigan. “How many coaching hires do we have where someone gets labeled a ‘home-run hire’ and then [they fail]?”

You may also like