Jim Harbaugh shoots up The Athletic's top college coaches rankings, regarded as Big Ten's best
Michigan Wolverines football head coach Jim Harbaugh has been successful at every stop, college or pro. His team has been the class of the Big Ten the last two seasons, winning the conference and making the College Football playoff in both.
The Athletic‘s Bruce Feldman and Stewart Mandel released their separate rankings of the top 25 coaches in the FBS heading into the 2023 season, and Harbaugh has shot up both national writers’ lists.
Feldman has Harbaugh No. 4 behind Alabama’s Nick Saban, Georgia‘s Kirby Smart and Clemson‘s Dabo Swinney. Mandel, meanwhile, slots the Michigan coach No. 6 behind Saban, Smart, Swinney, LSU‘s Brian Kelly and USC‘s Lincoln Riley.
The Wolverines’ 25 wins over the last two years come as part of a resurgence on the heels of a 2-4 season amid a pandemic in 2020. Post-2020, Harbaugh was No. 22 per Feldman and didn’t make Mandel’s top 25. He was 12th and 13th by the two writers in 2022.
The Michigan coach is now the clear-cut best head coach in the Big Ten according to both, and the results back it up. There’s a debate as to who’s the second best, with Feldman placing Penn State‘s James Franklin fifth, right behind Harbaugh, and Ohio State‘s Ryan Day sixth. Mandel has Day seventh, Wisconsin‘s Luke Fickell ninth and Franklin 10th.
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“This has been quite the bounceback in the past two years,” Feldman wrote. “After coming in at No. 12 last year — he had been a top-three guy for me before the losses to archrival Ohio State began to pile up — Harbaugh made some shrewd staff moves and had some hard conversations that led to a revamp of how the program operated. It has made a huge difference. In 2021, he led Michigan to its first Big Ten title in 17 years and a No. 3 ranking. In 2022, the Wolverines were even more impressive, smashing Ohio State in Columbus in a blowout win. They went 13-0 before stumbling in an upset loss against TCU in the College Football Playoff.
“The Wolverines are 25-3 over the past two seasons, including 19-1 against Big Ten opponents. What Harbaugh did at Stanford was even more remarkable, taking over a dreadful program and getting it to win a BCS bowl and No. 4 in the nation by Year 4. Then he jumped to the NFL, where he did an amazing turnaround job in San Francisco, getting the 49ers to the Super Bowl. Harbaugh will now have his most talented team at Michigan, so it’ll be interesting if the Wolverines can take the next big step.”
Mandel is on the verge of moving Harbaugh into his top five, where Feldman has him ranked.
“It’s a full-circle moment for Harbaugh, whom I ranked in the top 10 his first few years at Michigan but eventually dropped out entirely as his program sank,” Mandel said of the Michigan head man. “Now he’s all the way back following consecutive Big Ten championships, CFP appearances and rivalry blowouts over Ohio State. Do it again and he’d likely move up into my top five.”
With his eighth season having concluded, Harbaugh has now won 74 games at the helm, the fourth-most in program history, and his .747 winning percentage ranks fifth among U-M coaches with 90-plus games. The Wolverines have suffered 25 losses under Harbaugh.
Michigan has the seventh-most victories among all college football teams since Harbaugh was hired ahead of the 2015 season. The Wolverines rank second in the Big Ten behind Ohio State (90).
Harbaugh’s stock as a coach is as high as it’s been since he returned to Michigan, his alma mater, after four years and 49 wins (including playoffs) with the San Francisco 49ers. He’s received interest from NFL teams each of the last two offseasons but in January informed the Denver Broncos, with whom he interviewed, he’d be staying put in Ann Arbor.
