OHIO STATE

Harbaugh hire good for Big Ten — yes, even Ohio State

Jon Spencer
Reporter

It may not translate to the field this season, but right now Jim Harbaugh has Urban Meyer beat in one respect.

Michigan’s new football coach has 300.6 thousand Twitter followers to 297.6 for Meyer. (Just in case you were wondering, Fake Urban Meyer has 26.4 K.)

One of Harbaugh’s followers is Ohio State linebacker Josh Perry.

“He does a good job of promoting his program and showing their players and his natural side,” Perry said.

Some people felt they saw too much of Harbaugh’s natural side when photos were posted of him running a satellite camp shirtless this summer in Alabama.

“It was shirts and skins!” Harbaugh said, expressing mock outrage as he defending himself at Big Ten Media Days in Chicago. “Why doesn’t everyone understand that?”

Harbaugh seems completely oblivious to the attention he has attracted — shirt or no shirt — since being hired by his alma mater to reverse the fortunes of a backpedaling Michigan program.

Ask him about the “circus” and he figures you must be talking about lions and tigers and bears. And not the ones he quarterbacked in Chicago.

Ask him about turning up the intensity on the rivalry with Ohio State — the one in which he famously predicted and then delivered a victory in 1986 — and he’ll accuse you of “getting out in front of the headlights” and instead talk about the game immediately in front of him, the season opener with Utah.

Ask him about the ways he plans to change the culture at Michigan or the attributes he’s looking for in a starting quarterback and he’ll tell you “I don’t have that list in front of me.”

Harbaugh doesn’t intentionally try to be difficult; he’s just not interested in expounding on the nuts and bolts of football with reporters. Twitter, however, is another story.

“It takes time, but I do it,” he said about his tweets. “I find it humorous; it makes me laugh ... humor and different perspectives. There’s some pretty neat stuff. Some of the sarcasm is pretty funny.”

Like every other coach on board with Twitter, Harbaugh tries to use some of the information to his advantage in recruiting.

“Young people post things; you get to peek behind the curtain to see what they’re like,” he said. “There are a lot of positives.

“But if you misspell one thing or don’t put a comma or period in the right place, people make sport of you. It’s good for my spelling, good for my grammar.”

And being back in Ann Arbor appears to be good for his soul after a rocky finish to his reign with the San Francisco 49ers. Despite three straight trips to the NFC Championship Game and a berth in Super Bowl XLVII in 2013 — where he lost to his brother John and the Baltimore Ravens — management deemed its frayed relationship with Harbaugh irreparable.

“(Moving back) was a consideration, but I probably didn’t know how much until I was there every day,” Harbaugh said, his wife, Sarah, standing off to the side while he sat with reporters in Chicago. “It reminded me after 30 years I really love this place. I knew I did, but it was a tremendous reminder to be back on a daily basis.”

It really sunk in when he and his wife showed their young daughters, Addie and Katie, their classrooms this fall at St. Francis Elementary School. Little had changed since Harbaugh was a student there.

“It’s nice to visualize that and how happy he was to be back home,” said Sarah Harbaugh, who did a Dockers commercial poking fun at her husband’s go-to pants — a pair of baggy khakis.

“I’m learning more and more each day, every time I meet somebody he grew up with. I’m from the Midwest originally (Kansas City), so it’s nice to be back. There’s just something about Midwest people being so down to earth. So I’m excited to be not so much in a small town, but in the NFL you seemed so far away from everybody.”

Harbaugh was wrapping up his media session when the three players representing Michigan in Chicago — linebackers Joe Bolden and James Ross and receiver Jehu Chesson — climbed up on folding chairs to be seen above the media throng, pretending to be reporters.

So, coach, who’s the best looking guy on the team?

“When it comes to best looking, I only have eyes for one, and that’s Sarah Harbaugh,” he said, playing along. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but for me there’s only one.”

That prompted a chorus of aaahhs in the conference room.

Sarah and Jim Harbaugh took a vacation this summer to Paris — their first time away together in eight years — and he posted a picture on Twitter showing him in front of a McDonald’s.

“I adapted very quickly,” he said. “I was watching. You can observe a lot by just watching. (Parisians) were talking very softly, slow, not aggressive ... I’ve been adopting that. It’s the new me.”

Michigan fans hope he’s the “old” Harbaugh when it comes to producing victories, something he’s done everywhere he’s been — including college stints at the University of San Diego and Stanford.

A victory over Ohio State this November in Ann Arbor would be a good start. The Wolverines are 0-3 against Urban Meyer and were 1-9 against the Buckeyes when they were coached by Jim Tressel. They barely survived at home in 2011 when OSU finished 6-7 under interim coach Luke Fickell.

“I really do hope (Harbaugh) brings them back because that’s good for our conference, it’s especially good for our rivalry and it’s good for us,” OSU offensive tackle Taylor Decker said. “It’s a fun game to play in, especially when they’ve been playing well all year.”

In Chicago, Harbaugh kept deflecting questions about the Ohio State rivalry, speaking only in generalities about playing one’s archrival. In that respect, he hopes he fares better than he did against his brother John growing up.

“I learned what everybody learns who goes through competition and rivalries develop,” he said. “I played with the Ann Arbor Packers, playing the Ann Arbor Junior Wolverines or the Ann Arbor Junior Rams. That was big. There was something special about that and it continued in youth hockey with Wilkinson Luggage or the Sheriff’s All-Stars and playing Baskin-Robbins ... we’ve got to win this one.

“I played for the Sheriff’s All-Stars because I wasn’t good enough to play for Baskin-Robbins. John (a year older) played for them ... we darn near beat them.”

Close doesn’t count as Michigan well knows after throwing a scare into the Buckeyes last season in Ohio Stadium and getting thwarted by a last-second PAT interception by Tyvis Powell to seal OSU’s 42-41 victory up there in 2013.

It was the kind of game legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes and arch-nemesis Bo Schembechler might have tweeted back and forth about had social media been the rage back when they battled tooth-and-nail-and smashed headsets in this rivalry.

“I have not tried to picture that yet,” Harbaugh joked.

He spoke as glowingly about Woody as he did about Bo, his coach at Michigan. Harbaugh grew up hearing stories about Hayes from his father, Jack, a Crestline, Ohio native and assistant coach at Michigan.

“A tremendous coach, great presence and gift of personality,” said Harbaugh, describing Hayes. “I watched a lot of his old clips. I loved the documentary the BBC did. I loved the way he dressed ... the (block O) hat, the whistle around his neck, just a football coach.”

Harbaugh doesn’t want to be thought of as a Twitter sensation or a shirtless hunk — just a football coach, who isn’t above putting on cleats and running with his players or doing push-ups with them.

“It’s awesome,” Bolden said. “He’s a hands-on guy. Certain guys think they’re leaders, barking down at the guys climbing up the mountain. Harbaugh’s not one of those guys. He’s right there, pulling guys up the mountain.”

A Super Bowl coach back where it all began for him.

“It’s definitely surreal,” Bolden said. “Look at his track record, how he’s won football games. I think it speaks for itself.”