From the outside, Jim Harbaugh's tenure at Michigan has been quite weird. It becomes exponentially more weird when you read this excellent, revealing story on Harbaugh by former SI writer Lars Anderson, who's now with Bleacher Report.
So many great anecdotes unearthed in this story, making you think Harbaugh is a mix of Mike Leach, Woody Hayes ... and Ace Ventura.
The Virginia Tech head coach is sitting on a porch overlooking a golf course in Reynolds Plantation, Georgia, on a tar-bubbling summer afternoon—a lazy, storytelling kind of afternoon. As he puts down a glass of lemonade on a table, he says he has a tale to tell. It might just be, he claims, the weirdest damn story of his entire coaching career.
Beamer leans back in his chair and loosens a memory from late 2010. The Hokies of Virginia Tech, where Beamer has coached for the last 28 autumns, were preparing to play Stanford in the Orange Bowl. A few days before the Jan. 3 game, Beamer met the Cardinal head coach—Harbaugh—at an event at a restaurant in Miami.
“After we take some pictures, we start talking, just the two of us,” Beamer said. “Jim says over and over how much respect he has for Georgia Tech. He must have said it five times. I’m just looking at him like, ‘Are you serious?’
“Finally, I’m joking with him and I say I can’t wait to tell my team that you called us Georgia Tech. Because, you know, we’re Virginia Tech.”
Harbaugh then threw his infamous shark expression at Beamer: mouth agape, eyes on fire, looking poised to chomp. Harbaugh’s assistants have seen this look for years; he sometimes holds it for about 30 seconds without speaking, causing everyone in eyeshot to wonder what is flowing through his mind—if anything.
Beamer continued to lock eyes with Harbaugh for a few moments, waiting for him to say something, anything. It may have been the most uncomfortable silence of Beamer’s life.
“Well,” Harbaugh finally told Beamer. “I can’t wait to tell my players that you said you were going to play Samford, not Stanford!” He then turned and walked away.
More than four years later, Beamer smiles at the memory, still befuddled by Harbaugh's response. “No question, Jim is a different kind of coach,” said Beamer, whose team lost in the Orange Bowl to Harbaugh and Stanford 40-12 in what was Harbaugh’s last college game.
“He’s either crazy...or he’s crazy like a damn fox.”
Or this:
You don’t have to tell Sarah Harbaugh about her husband’s total immersion in football. There were times this spring when Jim, Sarah and their three young children—Addison, Katherine and Jack—would climb into their car that was parked in the driveway of their house, which sits just five lots down the street from Schembechler’s old place.
Jim would be behind the driver’s wheel; Sarah and the kids would strap on their seat belts. Then...silence. For 30 seconds, the air would stand still.
Sarah would finally look over at Jim, who would be staring blankly ahead, mouth open, as if he had mentally blasted off from the real world. This happens frequently with Harbaugh, even in the middle of conversations, which is why he often comes across as spacey and even rude.
“Jim!” Sarah would say, and suddenly he would shake from his reverie.
“Part of him is always coaching,” Sarah said. “He can’t turn it off. He just loves it so much.”
Or this:
“Jim wore us assistants down at San Diego,” said Lamb, the Southern Utah head coach who was an assistant under Harbaugh at the University of San Diego. “There’s a trail of players and coaches that have been left behind in Jim’s wake. If you’re not on board with him, he wants you to go away.
"But Jim also told us, ‘Stick with me and you’ll be farting through silk,’ which I guess meant that we’d all be so successful we could afford silk undergarments. And he was right: We could have if we’d stuck with him. But only Tim Drevno, his offensive coordinator at Michigan, is still with him. The rest of us left. Jim just isn’t for everybody.”
“Jim is nuts, but it’s a different kind of nuts,'' said a former teammate of Harbaugh's on the Indianapolis Colts who requested anonymity. "Once he focuses on something, he won’t let go of it. It makes him a great coach at a place in the short term, but it’s why he’s a disaster of a coach when he’s in one place too long.
"You can’t even have long meetings with him because his mind will start to wander and you’ll have no freaking idea what he’s talking about. His personality and his weirdness wear people down over time, and after four, five years, you just don’t want to deal with the guy anymore.”
A few Wednesday links:
-- Bud Foster compares Ohio State to the '87 Miami and '04 Southern Cal teams.
Sources say those two teams were pretty good.
I asked Foster if any previous opponent could approach the Buckeyes' quarterback riches. His one mention was Tennessee, which dusted Virginia Tech 45-23 in the 1994 Gator Bowl. The Vols had Peyton Manning, Todd Helton and Branndon Stewart.
That Tennessee team went a modest 8-4. Miami in 1987 and 2001, Florida State in 1999, Southern California in 2004 and Alabama in 2009 defeated the Hokies en route to perfect seasons. And what a collection of playmakers.
Michael Irvin and Melvin Bratton. Clinton Portis, Willis McGahee, Frank Gore and Jeremy Shockey. Chris Weinke, Peter Warrick and Anquan Boldin. Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, Lendale White, Dwayne Jarrett and Steve Smith. Mark Ingram and Julio Jones.
Foster especially remembers '87 Miami and 2004 USC.
"Maybe the first Miami team we played, in 1987, when it was Jimmy Johnson, one of his years," he said. "They had a bunch of cats. That might have been the most talented team."
-- At Texas, Steve Patterson's decision to run longtime SID John Bianco looks worse and worse by the day.
Here's Bianco's farewell, which drew a flood of glowing social-media responses from respected national media voices:
-- Hey, what ever happened to Tyreek Hill?
Former Oklahoma State return man and running back Tyreek Hill has enrolled at West Alabama
The Division II school announced Tuesday that Hill is joining the program and will be in uniform for Saturday's opener against Stillman College.
Hill was dismissed from Oklahoma State's football and track teams in December 2014 following his arrest on domestic violence charges. An All-Big 12 Conference all-purpose player, he was accused of punching and choking his pregnant girlfriend. He pleaded not guilty in January.
The arrest came less than a week after Hill's 92-yard punt return in a comeback victory over Oklahoma.
Hill was arrested on a charge of domestic abuse by strangulation.
-- The always entertaining Chris Dufresne, also known as Rankman, gives his preseason forecast.
1; Texas Christian; Former Big 12 powers Texas and Oklahoma will send cheerleaders once their seasons are over.
2; Ohio State; Looking to again get early Virginia Tech loss out of its system on way to national title.
3; Alabama; Saban wrote the (authorized) book on playing nonconference "road" games at "neutral" sites.
4; Oregon; Adams is the first Duck to earn starting quarterback job before knowing how to pronounce "Willamette."
5; Michigan State; Strong, silent, Gary Cooper-type program: All kickoffs should be "High Noon."
6; Baylor; Led the month of August in "What-the …?", "Really?" and "Are you kidding me?"
7; Clemson; Springsteen on program: "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"
8; Auburn; Tigers have to grow up early to avoid ending up very young in the rugged SEC West.
9; USC; Missing AD search called off after Pat Haden emerges from hiding behind his statement.
10; Georgia; "Blocked FG returned for TD" wins fan contest for how team will fall short this season.
-- Pretty cool story here on Ohio State's "Buckeye mommies."
Coach Urban Meyer speaks often of having making sure his team is nine units strong, referring to each positional group. The parents think of themselves as the team's 10th unit, and it sprang into action.
“We want to keep everybody connected,” Apple said. “That's at the heart of the organization. We're nine strong on the field. The 10th is on the sideline.”
That provided much comfort to Allison Brown. A succession of phone calls and messages from current and even former parents like Michael Bennett's mom, Connie, and Evan Spencer's mom, Gilda, helped lift her spirits.
“It's been overwhelming, the support I've gotten,” she said. “It's just been nonstop love and support, especially from my Buckeyes mommies.”
Candice Lee, linebacker Darron Lee's mom, was with Noah Brown at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. Thursday, two hours before his scheduled surgery to insert a metal rod into his leg. Tight end Nick Vannett's mom, Carol, who had never met Allison, stayed with Noah for four hours at the hospital. Jim and Georgette Perry, who are Joshua's parents, also lent support.
Brown said that Shelley Meyer, Urban's wife, visited the hospital and brought cookies. Brown even heard from parents as far as away as Australia - punter Cameron Johnston's mom. Noah's father, Dwight, also was comforted by calls from fellow parents.
“The love and support for my son has made me a bigger fan of Ohio State than I ever could have imagined,” Allison Brown said. “I was literally on the floor weeping about what was going on with my son miles away, and these moms pulled me up and got my head right, got me to remember I had to be strong for Noah.”
-- And we close with an acoustic offering from J.E. Sunde of Wisconsin:
LW
