OHIO STATE

Just like old times: Jack Harbaugh reinvested in rivalry

Jon Spencer
Reporter

MANSFIELD - Jack Harbaugh was on the front lines for most of the fabled "Ten-Year War" between his boss, Michigan head coach Bo Schembechler, and fellow icon Woody Hayes of Ohio State.

If Saturday's first showdown in this storied football rivalry between Harbaugh's son Jim and Urban Meyer starts a reenactment of that war, the elder Harbaugh wants to make sure his view this time is as good.

Actually it will be better since his seven years as an assistant for Schembechler (1973-79) was spent on game days in the coaches booth of the press box.

No cushy seat indoors this time. No being catered to in a loge. Jack Harbaugh and his wife, Jackie, will be in the stands, where they might be able to see their breath on an afternoon where the only thing guaranteed to be heated is the action.

"I want to be right there in the elements," Harbaugh said passionately.

Ah, the elements.

Jim Harbaugh, reticent to discuss his personal feelings about a rivalry he was first part of as ballboy and quarterback, waxed poetic on that very subject during the Big Ten teleconference call with reporters on Tuesday.

“If I had to pick one thing, it’s my first impressions of the game,” Harbaugh said. “First impression of ever seeing the game was just how those two uniforms looked on the field at the same time. The aesthetics. The sight lines, to me, the maize and blue, the scarlet and gray and the two helmets, the two uniforms, the sight lines are unbelievable.

Jim Harbaugh enters his introductory press conference as the new Head Coach of the University of Michigan football team at the Junge Family Champions Center on December 30, 2014 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“That was the first thing that I noticed that was amazing. And the games were always so close and competitive at the end of the year. Saw the two teams play to a 10-10 tie (in 1973) and a couple days later the athletic directors voted to send Ohio State to the Rose Bowl and our house and our community was, as (Michigan broadcaster) Bob Ufer put it, it was a dastardly deed, it was a day that would live in infamy. That was my first experience in the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry and one of the greatest football games I still have ever seen.”

He has not missed a Michigan-Ohio State game since.

“It was something I’d watch every year and anticipated it every year that it would be the best day of the year, even better than Christmas when I was growing up here in Ann Arbor,” Harbaugh said. “Then played in the game, but watched it from the sidelines as a Michigan player my freshman and sophomore years. I was hurt my junior year, and then played in the game my fourth and fifth year.

“I’ve watched the game ever since, every year since 1973. What time is the Michigan-Ohio State game on? I’m going to watch. That was the greatest thing to me, the sight lines. Perfect sight lines."

A new perspective

On Tuesday night, Jack Harbaugh took part with his son, granddaughter Grace and a few long-time fans in the annual grave walk at Ann Arbor's Forest Hill Cemetery. The group visited the graves of Schembechler, Ufer and former U-M coach Fielding Yost. Jim Harbaugh smashed a buckeye nut on Bo's grave.

Jack Harbaugh was weaned on the rivalry as an Ohio State fan growing up in the Ohio railroad town of Crestline and letting his imagination run as wild as Buckeye hero Hopalong Cassady during radio broadcasts of the game.

But his perspective changed when he joined forces with Schembechler, himself a native Ohioan from Barberton and former player and coach for Woody.

Crestline native Jack Harbaugh as his son, Jim, is introduced as Michigan's new head football coach last December.

"I think it was the Bo and Woody thing," Jack Harbaugh said of his fondest memories of the rivalry. "The '73 game, Woody sent the team out to attack the (M Club) banner. Ufer would say 'The dastardly act.' They tore it to the ground. Players were dancing on the banner, for crying out loud!

"Then when they came back in '75, a bunch of former Michigan players put letter jackets on and were surrounding the banner and challenged Ohio State to come get it. Woody sent 'em right through the banner this time. Then in '77, Bo said, that's it, Woody's not going to get me this time. You know why? Because he's not going to find me."

Schembecher intentionally avoided his mentor until the two teams filled the tunnel on the way to the field.

"Bo's like, this is crazy, the guy was my coach; I haven't spoken to him," Harbaugh said. "He turns around and touches Woody on the shoulder and Woody turns away. So Bo says, the hell with him; if he doesn't want to talk, I'm going to walk away. Woody realized Bo wasn't going to come back so he chases Bo. 'What's with you? You're a big time coach now, a Big Ten coach, and you can't say hello to the man?'

"Woody's dad was (a school administrator) in New Philadelphia and was into grammatical correctness. Bo said, 'Hey, Woody, I tried to say hello to you and you didn't know it was me.' Woody said, 'No, no, Bo. You didn't know it was I.'

"Woody had gotten him again!"

Jack Harbaugh laughed so hard as he told that story over the phone you could almost see the tears in his eyes.

"Those years of watching the sparring and gamesmanship and then the games, all coming down to two points, three points, or they were tied. It was just seven years for me. I felt the same about Woody as I did Bo. I just admire him so much," Harbaugh said.

"I don't ever remember seeing it on TV. You had to picture it through radio. Then to come to Michigan and be part of it, the competition ... wow! It was like all at once you came to that (final) game and the screws were tightened. You could see it in meetings and feel it in practice. (Ohio State-Michigan) is a season in itself."

The coaches' obsession with the rivalry induced paranoia. Harbaugh remembers one year where Bo was convinced Woody had someone spying on Michigan's practice from the third floor window of a building across the street.

Michigan coach and alum Jim Harbaugh inherited a 5-7 team and has turned it into a 9-2 squad in his first year at the helm.

"I looked up to see what he was talking about," Harbaugh said. "'Gawddammit Harbaugh, don't look up there, they'll know we see them.' He called the sheriff to surround the building. We heard the sirens and saw the lights (of the patrol cars) flashing, so we went on with practice and forgot about it. After practice here comes the sheriff. 'Bo, I got him. He was there with permission of the owner, so I couldn't confiscate the film. But I did take it out of the camera and it slipped right out of my hands and rolled on the floor. All the film is exposed, so he won't be able to use anything."

Turned out, the spy wasn't working for Woody. He was a wire service photographer trying to see if Michigan quarterback Dennis Franklin was practicing after twisting his ankle.

"It was not a clandestine operation," Harbaugh said. "When I look back, there were just so many of those situations."

Re-invested in rivalry

This is the first time Jack Harbaugh is invested in the rivalry since 1986, Jim's senior year. That was the year he guaranteed and delivered a victory at Ohio State to propel the Wolverines to the Rose Bowl after Michigan's dream of a perfect season and national championship were derailed the week before in a loss to unranked Minnesota.

"The Guarantee" was the only time Jack Harbaugh saw his son play in person in college.

"I think they were down about the game at Minnesota, one of those gut-wrenching losses, so I think what Jim did was take it upon himself to focus the team, focus himself and that's what came about," Harbaugh said. "He put political correctness aside and said, I'm going to say what's on my mind. I think the beautiful thing about it was the way Bo supported him. 'If you said it, you better make it happen.' Both Jackie and I were very proud that he would say what's on his mind and his team supported him to where it came to be."

Jack Harbaugh, who won a national championship as a player (Bowling Green, 1959) and coach (Western Kentucky, 2002), learned the day of the guarantee he was losing his job at Western Michigan.

Michigan head coach Bo Schembechler yells at quarterback Jim Harbaugh as the Wolverines fell victim to Arizona State, 22-15, in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Jan. 2, 1987. For Schembechler, it was his seventh loss in Rose Bowl action. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

"I didn't have a job and didn't have any responsibilities, so we went to Crestline a couple days early (before the OSU game)," Harbaugh said. "We thought we'd meet with some (extended) family and friends. We were there four or five hours and I said, Jackie, we've got to get out of here. They were Ohio State people. It was like we were coming in to take their churches and bars."

Harbaugh laughed.

"I never felt so unwelcome my entire life," he said, teasingly. "You'd think someone would say 'Wow, it's neat to have somebody from Crestline (who's son) is playing in the game. I think they would have taken a crow bar to his knee if they could have."

It may be even harder to come home if the rivalry starts to turn Michigan's way. Already, Michigan's six Big Ten wins this season under Jim Harbaugh equals its total of the last two years combined. And the 9-2 mark is only the second time in the last seven years the Wolverines have won more than eight games.

"It's just the evolution of football; it's just the way it works," Jack Harbaugh said. "He has very good players here; I mean very good. They're very good people. One of Jim's great mantras is 'Better today than yesterday; better tomorrow than today.' The players have really responded to that mantra. Surprised? No. And now I'm happy this game is relevant again."

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