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Jim Harbaugh: AP/PFF Coach of the Year Comment Count

Seth December 10th, 2021 at 2:09 PM

Harbaugh has been voted the year’s best coach in the country by the Associated Press.

Cincinnati’s Luke Fickell, who took the Bearcats to the playoffs and an undefeated regular season, finished second. Harbaugh received a plurality (22) first place votes of the 53 cast, with Fickell (16), Baylor's Dave Aranda (5) MSU's Mel Tucker (4), and Utah State's Blake Anderson (3) the others receiving more than one vote.

The Football Writers Association of America also named Harbaugh a finalist for their Coach of the Year award, which will be announced on December 20. The FWAA often, but not always, chooses the same winner as the AP. Harbaugh was also Pro Football Focus's choice for the award.

CoY awards usually go to coaches of small schools having historic seasons or coaches of blue blood programs bouncing back from historic lows. Performance relative to expectations is a (de facto) primary component. The last ten AP CoYs were Jamey Chadwell (Coastal Carolina), Ed Orgeron (LSU), Brian Kelly (Notre Dame), Scott Frost (UCF), Mike MacIntyre (Colorado), Dabo Swinney (Clemson), Garry Patterson (TCU), Gus Malzahn (Auburn), Brian Kelly again, and Les Miles (LSU). Harbaugh is the first Michigan head coach to win the AP’s designation, which they’ve been giving out since 1998 (Bill Snyder). The FWAA winners of those years were the same except they chose Bill Clark (UAB) over Kelly in 2018, Kirk Ferentz (Iowa) over Swinney in 2015, and Mike Gundy (Ok St) over Miles in 2011.

Clearly, Harbaugh falls in the latter category. After his 2-4 season in 2020, Harbaugh agreed to a restructured to make him easier to buy out. That also occurred well into January, IE after the NFL coaching carousel stopped spinning. Harbaugh jettisoned several longtime and grizzled assistants—including at OL coach and defensive coordinator—replacing them with guys in their 30s in the mold of his recently Broyles-winning OC Josh Gattis. Needless to say most of the fanbase, including this space, were not optimistic that the gambles would work out.

Harbaugh and his young staff are now Big Ten champions, ranked #2 in the country with a 42-27 win over Ohio State and a berth in the college football playoffs. They’re currently ranked 4th in SP+, with the #16 defense and #7 defense to Bill Connelly, plus the #1 special teams unit to Brian Fremeau’s FEI.

The new contract does have a clause that pays Harbaugh a $75,000 bonus for winning this award, but since he decided to donate all of his bonuses this year to those who took a paycut in the athletic department during last year’s COVID cutbacks, that’s just more good news for them. Harbaugh finished one vote behind MSU head coach Mel Tucker for Big Ten coach of the year.

Comments

aiglick

December 10th, 2021 at 2:16 PM ^

The interesting thing is this is the year that Dabo Swinney finally broke through at Clemson I believe (his Year 7 that is). So there is some precedent for this. I imagine Swinney had to deal with a fully weaponized FSU which is why it took him so long to break through. Obviously we’ve had OSU. Very happy for Harbaugh and extremely proud that he donated his incentive money to those less fortunate. He really didn’t need to do that. Such a classy gesture.

Joined: 11/27/2010

MGoPoints: 21521

bronxblue

December 10th, 2021 at 3:50 PM ^

To play devil's advocate, MSU was pretty bad at the end of the Dantonio era and then were worse last year.  Tucker hit gold with Walker and won some close games to get MSU into playoff contention late into the year, and while that's not probably sustainable as a one-year accomplishment it's pretty solid.  And if you made up your mind prior to the OSU/Iowa games then Tucker is likely your man.

I do think Tucker is going to come back to earth next year and so it's going to be interesting to see if MSU is happy paying a defense-first coach almost $3M more than OU is paying Venables for what's likely to be a mid-level program.

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 171779

Carpetbagger

December 10th, 2021 at 4:19 PM ^

I don't think I'll ever understand people who run down some other team, or coach, for no reason. Tucker did a great job this year. MSU did a lot better than expected. Is it all Walker? Who knows, but it's still a great turnaround both Harbaugh/M and Tucker/MSU had this year.

You can celebrate Harbaugh without bashing Tucker.

Joined: 12/31/2010

MGoPoints: 6577

UMForLife

December 11th, 2021 at 12:45 AM ^

He got blasted out of the orbit by OSU. If they made up their mind with 2 regular season games left, the joke is on them. I don't see a good justification for making up your mind with 3 games left or watching MSU be dismantled by OSU. A coach of the year should never be down 49 in the first half. They also lost to Purdue. 

I just don't understand why everyone trying to play nice to MSU. Tucker did not deserve it. 

Joined: 11/04/2013

MGoPoints: 63393

Fan from TTDS

December 10th, 2021 at 5:18 PM ^

Mel Tucker did a pretty good job this year just being his second year as head coach at MSU.  MSU had a lot of problems when he took over the program last year.  I hear that he is getting a few more good kids from the transfer portal the next few months.  MSU signed him to a new $95 million dollar contract so that he would not go to LSU or any other school.

Joined: 12/05/2021

MGoPoints: 538

GoingBlue

December 10th, 2021 at 2:23 PM ^

*MSU conspiracy theorist voice* 

Harblow is just doing this to bribe the UofM staff, something really shady going on here. I bet all those people lobbied the other coaches to vote for JH to get their share of the $75k 

Go Blue! Well deserved. 

Michigan has elite coaching at the 5 most important spots 

Head Coach, DC, OC, Special Teams Coach, and OL Coach. 

Joined: 01/04/2017

MGoPoints: 1545

Totally2

December 10th, 2021 at 2:29 PM ^

Major Props to Jim Harbaugh...
&
Josh Gattis, Mike McDonald, Sherrone Moore, Steve Clinkscale, Mike Hart, Jay Harbaugh, Ron Bellamy, Shawn Nua, George Helow, Matt Weiss and Ben Herbert...

Hard working, football-knowing-&-teaching studs. Appreciate Thee.

And as long as I'm at it... Special Props to All the DTs and to Vincent Gray for his titanium mental toughness... kept showing up, kept working and delivered! Most courageous Mr. Gray... Happy for you and all of your teammates...

Joined: 08/23/2008

MGoPoints: 189

trock444

December 10th, 2021 at 2:56 PM ^

Makes the people that voted for the Big 10 coach of the year look really, really dumb.  They voted Mel "Mother" Tucker coach of the year in the Big..

Joined: 06/08/2011

MGoPoints: 1381

bronxblue

December 10th, 2021 at 3:46 PM ^

I'll be in the minority and give credit to Tucker for what he did at MSU this year.  I don't think it's super-sustainable to turn over half your team and hope to snag a Heisman-level RB who carries your offense (and I do think Walker should have made it in over Stroud) while your defense is mediocre at best, but MSU had rock-bottom expectations and they went into November with a chance to make the playoffs.  That's a good job.  I'd rather give it to him than Ferentz of someone who skates by to 10 wins because the West is mediocre.

That said, it does feel like votes may have been sent in before the BTT game.

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 171779

Seth

December 10th, 2021 at 3:59 PM ^

Tucker was 4th in the country--it's not like he's a bad pick. Picking Tucker for Big Ten coach of the year was fine, IMO. That team all were wearing nametags in spring, and they should have lost half of their games. When you have that you ask is it luck or is it a coach maximizing what he has, and I watched enough MSU to side with the latter. They went for it on 4th down and made spectacular plays. They flea flickered every game. They left nothing on the table, and took enough good gambles to steal some. Our game with them was a ref show, but the refs only kept MSU in it: the difference there was also that Michigan made mistakes and kicked field goals down the stretch and MSU made huge 4th down conversions down the stretch. The part of that which Mel Tucker controlled was some of the best coaching the league has seen in years. Give him credit.

Joined: 10/14/2008

MGoPoints: 149221

bronxblue

December 10th, 2021 at 6:42 PM ^

Absolutely.  I said he's a good coach and deserves a lot of credit; I wouldn't pay him $10M/yr for it but he's way better than I thought he'd be coming from CU.

I think he deserves a lot of credit for winning close games, though I also thought their defense never really looked coherent, especially in the secondary, and that's also on the coaches.  It's why I always snickered a bit at the red zone defense argument some MSU fans trotted being something they "planned" for because no competent defensive system I've ever seen is based on giving up a ton of yards and then hoping a team settles for FGs.

Their 4th-down conversion rate is impressive and they made some good playcalls; they also only tried 16 of them, which surprised me a bit.  The only real "luck" I see perhaps not being sustainable is going 4-0 1-score games where they are outgainned in 3 out of 4 of them.  Split those 2-2 and MSU is 8-4 and still beating expectations but probably not as over-the-moon with him.  Now, sometimes you just win close games (Dantonio had a knack for that, if memory serves me right), but I am generally dubious of that trend continuing year-over-year especially for a team with issues on offense and defense that don't look to be repaired in an offseason.

But again, MSU being not-garbage this year falls on him and his ability to get all those broken toys to work together as well as they did.  That's a great coaching performance from a guy who nobody thought could pull it off.

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 171779

PBR

December 11th, 2021 at 12:21 PM ^

Good points except the first.  He had a good year and better than expected, no doubt.  But it is coach of the year and he was not better than Harbaugh if voting had been after all was said and done. So it is a bad pick, even though he had a good (even say great, based on expectations) year.  It makes no sense to vote for awards while season is in progress, which is the only possible explanation here.  It is illogical to say Harbaugh is COY nationally among 100+ coaches in FBS but not COY in BIG when compared to 13 other coaches who are also in the FBS group.  Different criteria for national vs league COY?  Why?  Difference was timing - one based on incomplete evidence and the other based on an entire season.  Tucker is not a bad coach, it appears.  But not best coaching job in BIG (and not worth $95M IMO, but I think Spartan fans will figure that out in due time).         

Joined: 12/01/2021

MGoPoints: 497

matty blue

December 10th, 2021 at 4:21 PM ^

agree 100%.

my only argument is that i think some of the ballots were probably filled out but not mailed before sparty played ohio state.  some of them might have even been in pen, and you know how hard it can be to find whiteout or an available printer.

i do think that picking tucker is at least defensible, fwiw.

i'd also say - i can't say i'll lose sleep over it.  i know our guy did a brilliant job this season, and we're still in the mix to win it all.  if that was the case and harbaugh didn't get a single vote, i'd be good with it.  i suspect he'd say the same thing.

Joined: 08/01/2008

MGoPoints: 39201

bronxblue

December 10th, 2021 at 3:43 PM ^

Congrats to the whole staff - that's a team award that I'm sure Harbaugh is happy to share with all the coaches.

Fickell still strikes me as a bit of an unknown as an HC but he deserved recognition as well, and Tucker absolutely deserved to be recognized as well for taking MSU from garbage to pretty good.  But Harbaugh did an amazing job this year under less-than-optimal conditions and glad he won.

Also pretty cool that a bunch of UM staff members are going to get some more backpay.

Joined: 11/22/2008

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