Better UM coach: Harbaugh or Carr

it’s Carr and it’s frankly not close.  Harbaugh has the potential to get there but he hasn’t won anything if note yet in his Michigan career. 

Carr and it is not even close. 

You have to play the games as they are stacked - regardless of who is coaching at the time, players they have on the team, state of the team, etc.  

Carr won. 

Ask again in 5 years. Carr's evaluation in 2002 would have been very different than his evaluation in 2007. Carr always had his critics but by 2007 those critics were like 90% of the fanbase.

Carr ran the program like an old U.S. corporate powerhouse i.e. U.S. Steel or General Motors. Pretty sure his book on leadership was built around that premise among other things. Now it's not entirely surprising that in the 21st century those corporations ran into some deep trouble just like we did.

We'll see about Harbaugh.

Who has more accomplishments at Michigan? Carr.

Who could have performed better in the other's era? Harbaugh in Carr's era. (Yes, natty was great, but talking overall wins.)

Who do the players like more? Tie.

Who would I rather have then or now? Harbaugh -- despite his smashmouth run bias, he is more into innovation, strategic wrinkles, and seems willing to change (recognizes and appreciates great intelligence in others), which makes me watch with much more interest today, than when I was more into sports during the predictable Carr years. The only time Carr was exciting for me was when he would have a month to prepare for bowl games and could think outside the box.

Who is best at wasting time answering questions that don't help accomplish anything material? Me. I'll banish myself from this message board until GTD and deserving it.

I think it is extremely difficult to compare these two eras. College football has completely changed. The recruiting pay sites, the always on national TV, the playoffs, the constant buzz all the time for the best players. It’s so much more saturation than 20 years ago. I blame the internet, Steve Jobs, and millennials for the Alabama and Clemson and OSU dynasties. 

Lloyd is like 70+ years old and never adapted with the changing football landscape.

Harbaugh is at least trying to change.

Carr every day of the week.

Feelingsball: Carr took over a program with significant institutional stability; Harbaugh had to take over one that was completely rudderless.

CEO: Carr hired mediocre coaches and refused to fire bad ones. Harbaugh has shown that he's willing to cut his buddies loose if they're not getting the job done. We'll see whether he gets more conservative as he gets older.

Numbers: Connelly had a thread in the offseason with charts showing a bunch of different teams' SP+ ratings over the years. It's early, but Harbaugh's teams have been better than Carr's on average.

So why does Carr have more hardware? In the first place, he was probably a bit lucky on the national championship. His tenure was nowhere near as good as Bo's, but Bo never won one. Second, Meyer's OSU teams were better than Cooper's. Once Cooper was out, Carr went (IIRC) 1-6 against OSU. Failing to beat OSU is really the only thing separating Harbaugh's teams from 2 probable B1G championships and playoff appearances. (As for this year, let's maybe watch some more football before we go into panic mode.)

Carr.

No debate. Bit of a silly, loaded question.

Let me know when Harbaugh wins five B10 titles in eight years.

Heck, let me know when he wins one.

The comparison is unfair when you consider that Carr didn't have to compete in a conference organized into divisions and win titles outright in a championship game.  Lloyd is credited with 5 Big 10 titles, but only two of them are outright titles.  Of the three championships he shared, if we extrapolate based on current divisions of the then-11 team Big 10 (clumsy for sure), then we don't win the East in 1998 due to a loss to OSU.  We would play a rematch game against Purdue (to whom we'd already lost) in Indianapolis in 2000 and a rematch against Iowa (to whom we'd already won) in 2004.  How those scenarios play out is pure speculation obviously, but Carr's record would almost surely be less impressive than it currently stands.

By similar analysis, were we still operating under a single conference model, then Harbaugh would already have a shared Big 10 championship between OSU and Northwestern in 2018.  This compares more favorably to the 2 title and an NC that Lloyd has accrued in his first 4 seasons as HC.

It's intellectually dishonest to impugn Harbaugh for a lack of titles compared to Carr while ignoring the fact that it's simply harder to win championships in the current conference model and that Lloyd would've likely fared worse under such a system.

Carr’s record vs AP top ten teams was 19-9. Harbaugh would need to go on, what, an 18 game winning streak vs the top 10 to match that?

Also, Carr is the only Michigan coach in 70 years to win, or even play for, a national title. 70 YEARS.

For these reasons and for others, Carr should have the undying respect and gratitude of M fans everywhere.

That said...yeah, it was a different era. Harbaugh is fine, we just need to stay the course and M will be fine