Exit Harbaugh: The Takes
Well: Jim Harbaugh decided to go out on top, at least as far as college goes. As you have no doubt already heard, he's taken the Chargers job. Michigan is already in the process of hiring Sherrone Moore and will have a press conference announcing it as soon as they can. Technically they're supposed to post the job for a week before they can hire anyone, but IIRC that's some sort of Department of Education diversity initiative and Sherrone Moore is about to be the first black head coach in program history, so they're applying for a waiver.
Let's get some h2 tags up in here.
This was probably inevitable
Harbaugh had flirted with the NFL the past two offseason and just culminated a nine-year career with three Big Ten titles and Michigan's first national title since 1997. He checked one of the items on his bucket list (a term popularized by the 2007 film Bucket List) and there are only two left: win a Super Bowl and beat Kathy Lee Gifford in an arm-wrestling contest. He cannot do the former at Michigan.
I don't think money really matters to Harbaugh, nor do I think he "needed to feel loved." He has more money than he knows what to do with. He mows his own lawn and one day I went into Home Depot and literally the first person I saw was Harbaugh, no doubt there to do some errand 99.999% of multi-millionaires delegate. And if the man wanted to feel loved and appreciated he would not be leaving a Michigan fanbase still in the outer stratosphere for an NFL team that almost literally has no fans.
I think the thought process went like this: can I win the Super Bowl here? Will they hire the GM I want? Will I have full control otherwise? The answer to the first is "yes, I am Jim Harbaugh." Once the answers to the latter two were also yes, Michigan could have given Harbaugh a fully guaranteed 16 million dollars a year and a rider that he gets to pull out every hair in Tony Petitti's eyebrows and it wouldn't have mattered.
This does not happen to other college coaches who win titles because the transition from one to the other almost never works. In the past 20 years there has been one coach who had an extended, successful college tenure after a successful NFL one. His name is Jim Harbaugh. Pete Carroll is the only other guy in the picture, and Carroll had a 33-31 NFL record before taking the Seahawks job. Is the NFL going to hire Dabo? In a word, lol. I remember what being an NFL coach did to Nick friggin' Saban. I would pay money to see Dabo coach an NFL team.
[AFTER THE JUMP: keep Herbert, keep Herbert, keep Herbert]
…but what are we doing here?
If you are trying to retain Jim Harbaugh and he is asking for something in his contract and you do not want to give it to him and then you end up giving it to him at the last second, what was the point of denying him the thing in the first place?
— John U. Bacon (@Johnubacon) January 25, 2024
It is true that Harbaugh was probably gone no matter what Michigan did; it's also true that Warde Manuel doesn't come out of this looking particularly good.
Meanwhile, the impending hire of Moore is another on-rails decision for a guy who's barely had to make a decision in his tenure. The timing of John Beilein's departure meant that the college coaching carousel was already done and Juwan Howard was more or less the only reasonably appealing option available. Brandon Naurato was hired as an interim largely because Manuel dithered for months about whether he should fire Mel Pearson. It's a very strange situation in that the athletic director receives neither merits nor demerits for the performance of Michigan's three most important sports.
The one actual decision Manuel can be credited with is not firing Harbaugh after the COVID year, but isn't that just more of the same inaction? Anyway.
Sherrone Moore is the right decision-type substance
[Barron]
It's the end of January and Kalen DeBoer got sniped by Alabama mere moments before all this started going down. Assuming that Dan Lanning is untouchable (and he turned down Bama, so… yeah), who's out there that has a compelling case? It says something that Feldman's list of non-Moore candidates is three guys long: Lance Leipold, Chris Kleiman, and Brian Kelly. You've got two guys around 60 piloting B12 programs to good but not unassailable heights and an obvious nonstarter.
If Michigan could have gotten DeBoer, I'm listening. In lieu of a stone-cold lock sort, continuing the program momentum with Moore makes the most sense. The culture around the program is better than it ever has been and I don't think it's a coincidence that the arrows started pointing all the way up when Moore started become a larger and larger factor.
Promoting Moore should help Michigan fend off the portal pirates that decimated Alabama's roster, and the fact that he's 37 instead of 62 (Leipold) or 56 (Kleiman) gives Moore huge long-term upside. Also, the last guy who was an internal hire in the aftermath of Harbaugh started off with four 11+ win seasons in his first five years. David Shaw tailed off badly at the end of his tenure but kept the Harbaugh train rolling for a long time. One of Harbaugh's biggest assets was hiring coaches. (Note: not "recruiting" analysts.) Let the man cook.
Oooh: minor searchbits time
Michigan isn't going to undergo a month-long will-he-or-won't he Harbaugh chase this time around (RIP our coaching search traffic) but his exit is going to cause some additional departures amongst the staff. Josh Henschke of Rivals asserts that Harbaugh is going to take Jesse Minter and Jay Harbaugh with him, which would create a total of four openings since Chris Partridge was not permanently replaced after his firing.
If nothing else changes, that means Michigan needs an offensive coordinator, a defensive coordinator, an OL coach, a LB coach, and fill-in-the-blank.
OL is pretty easy: Grant Newsome is already the TE coach and will probably slide over.
DC is conceptually easy: find the most Ravens guy around. John Harbaugh tossed a couple of up-and-comers Michigan's way, which worked out great for everyone involved. Let's keep doing that. Zach Orr looks like a potential candidate. Orr played for the Ravens as a UDFA out of North Texas was second team All-Pro in his third year, then had to retire due to a congenital spine injury. He immediately became a Ravens defensive analyst, then popped over to the Jaguars for a year as their OLB coach before returning to coach LBs at Baltimore. He has the same profile as Macdonald, except he was also an All-Pro LB. The other Ravens-adjacent guy is D'Anton Lynn, who USC just poached from UCLA. Normally you don't get guys jumping before they even play a game, but maybe you could poke Lynn with a stick, show him the defensive rosters of USC and Michigan, and induce a move.
Lots of people are mentioning Jim Leonhard, who was a very successful DC at Wisconsin until Paul Chryst got fired and Wisconsin install him as a mid-season interim, clearly with an eye towards giving him the full-time gig. Instead they pivoted amongst lots of rumors that Leonhard had stabbed Chryst in the back, and when that didn't work he got a job at Illinois. As an analyst. After their DC left to be Purdue's head coach. I have is-this-dude-a-good-dude questions. Maybe this is spurious, sure.
OC is one of those things where Michigan might internally promote Campbell and lean on Moore. In that case you'd need a QB coach. LB/QB/whatever position coaches could be anyone. I would like to offer Courtney Morgan whatever he wants to come back.
Herbert?
Once the Harbaugh-to-the-NFL train started rolling in earnest the biggest question on most people's minds was Wither Ben Herbert? Herbert is the highest-paid S&C coach in America and the NFL does not really have equivalent jobs, as most players have their own personal trainer. There are conflicting reports here, with Henschke asserting he expects Herbert back and Feldman tweeting that "the expectation is that Harbaugh brings Herbert with him." Nick Baumgardner knows the ins and outs of all of this and seemed skeptical of that one:
Ben Herbert makes seven figures at Michigan as S&C coach.
— Nick Baumgardner (@nickbaumgardner) January 25, 2024
That is not, to my knowledge, what NFL S&C coaches make. In fact, just about every player on your team has his own trainer. So. That's ... we'll see about that one.
If Michigan can't keep Herbert when NFL S&C jobs are basically nonexistent—quick, name the most famous NFL S&C coach—then it is time to put Manuel in the rocket and fire him into the sun.
January 25th, 2024 at 12:54 PM ^
My conspiracy theory is that the noisy leaks yesterday about giving Harbaugh everything he wanted were a favor to max out his negotiating leverage with Spanos.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:02 PM ^
I don’t think so. I think Michigan wasn’t going to give Harbaugh what he asked for until he had a viable counter-offer, and screwed themselves when he liked the other job more. I’ve definitely worked for large organizations that have done that (for me and others).
January 25th, 2024 at 1:15 PM ^
I definitely wasn't in any of these conversations, hence my calling it a conspiracy theory, but I have been in conversations of the "I'm excited for your new opportunity. What can I do to help?" variety.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:26 PM ^
My employer is definitely a place that won’t give a raise unless you’ve got an offer somewhere else (or you get an internal promotion). Years ago they pulled that with me. I thought for sure I’d at least get a pay increase from them after I’d had some second-round interviews, but they waited until I had the another offer in hand. They immediately matched my offer (which was a 50% pay increase), but after having gone through the interview process I decided I wanted to go elsewhere. 8 months later they called me back up and told me they really, really missed me, and two months after that I was back there with my salary doubled from the prior year. Worked out for me in the long run, but some institutions don’t like negotiating against themselves, and I could definitely see Michigan being one of those institutions from all that we’ve heard over the years.
January 25th, 2024 at 5:54 PM ^
Can confirm. Michigan is one of those institutions. At least outside of the athletic dept
January 26th, 2024 at 6:54 AM ^
In the college football world this would be called Tampering.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:47 PM ^
Michigan was not so stupid as to understand the implications of playing Harbaugh that way in the public eye and with the rumor mills abounding. They have jobs to protect, too. They - I mean Warde - likely played it that way to make it look like he tried to keep Harbaugh while really denying Harbaugh what he wanted until it was too late. He pushed him out the door so he could bring in his boy. Sorry, not sorry. It's no secret Warde has never been Jim's guy. Ever. I also don't give Warde credit for ascending so far in the business world without understanding how these games of internal politics work. He plays them and plays them well. That's how he got this far. And he's at it again. Like a true politician. And people are sheep who merely think politicians are simpleton morons and not extremely manipulative, opinionated, Princes by Machiavelli. You make seven figures or lead massive departments in the public sphere - you play these games.
January 25th, 2024 at 4:08 PM ^
It's no secret people on social media have always speculated without any evidence that Warde has never been Jim's guy.
FIFY
January 25th, 2024 at 4:33 PM ^
If Jim wasn't Warde's guy, he would have fired him after 2020.
This is not hyperbole. It was BAD.
January 25th, 2024 at 5:09 PM ^
That would have meant paying Jim's buyout - in a Covid year when we ran a big deficit.
Warde tried to do it on the cheap: convince Jim to leave on his own, so there'd be no buyout to pay. He offered him a 50% paycut and told him to take it or leave it. Jim was pissed off and looked for an NFL job, but no one was willing to bite. He then grudgingly came back, thankfully for us.
January 25th, 2024 at 5:18 PM ^
Noooooooooooo. It would not have meant a buyout.
Jim's contract was up.
Either side could have walked for free. But nobody except Warde was calling with an appealing offer after a 2 win covid year.
January 25th, 2024 at 5:29 PM ^
He was still under contract. He signed a seven-year deal when he was hired, and this was at the end of year six. And at some point in he had gotten a raise.
January 25th, 2024 at 5:32 PM ^
His deal was never extended. The talk was always how Jim didn't care.
January 25th, 2024 at 5:38 PM ^
Correct, but he was under contract through the 2021 season (which would be his seventh), and a buyout would have cost Michigan $4 million that year.
Warde didn't want to pay the $4M.
January 25th, 2024 at 9:13 PM ^
gotta commit to the bit, i guess.
January 25th, 2024 at 10:35 PM ^
No. The $4 million was the buyout if Michigan wanted to let him go under the new contract. Under the original 7-year contract buyout amounts tapered down to nothing after 5 years. Either side could have walked away for free after the 2020 season.
January 25th, 2024 at 4:37 PM ^
Never been Jims guy yet he had the majority of the fanbase wanting him to can him a few years ago, and didn't. If anything, it makes Jim his guy, doesn't it ?
January 26th, 2024 at 12:06 AM ^
I don’t think people believe they’re morons or that this is some huge skill. It’s just that people with morals don’t feel right playing these games and talking out of both sides of their mouth to get ahead.
January 25th, 2024 at 2:23 PM ^
My assumption was that the department wanted to look good and show that they did everything they could to keep him (when in fact the lateness of the agreement meant they may not have wanted to actually give it to him).
That's just a theory.
Cool that both Michigan Basketball and Football would have Black head coaches, even if Howard does end up losing his job after the season (wish he had panned out. Still think it was a good hire at the time).
Didn't Realize Moore was so young. It will be interesting to see his coaching style. Despite being an offensive guy, in his coaching wins this season he looks like he coaches similar to Carr. Strong running, with limited turnovers, and rely on your defense to make stops.
That may change, as he was put in tough spots for 3 of those wins. Love how many ex players are on staff. They were all amazing players and seem to be excellent coaches. Hart has got to be one of the top RB coaches in the nation after what I;ve seen him do at Indiana and Michigan.
January 25th, 2024 at 3:10 PM ^
Universities are notorious for doing this (waiting until someone has an offer in hand before making retention offers) with current faculty who are being interviewed for jobs elsewhere.
January 25th, 2024 at 6:33 PM ^
Know this isn't a popular take, but it's good we didn't give him everything he asked for. Sure offering tons of money made sense, but total immunity even if suspended for years by the crazy NCAA would have been a terrible waste of money. It also would have been hard to recruit into that situation or keep someone good in a weird interim role behind him while suspended. Plus he wanted the contract to not start for a month so he could keep interviewing with the NFL - could you imagine if he'd have signed and then went to the NFL the next week? We offered all we should have before the last day, and while it would unquestionably have been better to keep Harbaugh, we'll be fine going forward with Moore.
January 26th, 2024 at 10:30 AM ^
I agree with you. What's in Harbaugh's interest is not necessarily in the university's interest.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:03 PM ^
My conspiracy theory is that the noisy leaks yesterday about giving Harbaugh everything he wanted were done to try and cover the collective asses of those parties who'd been refusing to do so until they realized "oh shit, he's actually got an offer he might take"
January 25th, 2024 at 1:11 PM ^
Bingo!
So can we fire Warde into the Sun even if Coach Herb stays?
Please?!
January 25th, 2024 at 2:56 PM ^
As I kid I always thought: If the coyote can afford all of the Acme stuff, why doesn't he just buy himself a chicken dinner?
January 25th, 2024 at 3:20 PM ^
As a kid my only thought was "where can I get a pair of Acme rocket skates?"
January 25th, 2024 at 7:52 PM ^
If Mr. Spock was so smart, why wasn't he Captain of the Enterprise?
January 25th, 2024 at 10:28 PM ^
He didn’t have the emotional intelligence.
January 25th, 2024 at 10:26 PM ^
It was personal.
January 27th, 2024 at 10:08 PM ^
chicken dinner?!
Clearly youre not a RoadRunner fan.
Don't you remember the episode where the Coyote uses a diagram to describe the 17 different exquisite flavors of the Road Runner's body parts? . . . I think the tail feather is actually pistachio ice cream.
January 25th, 2024 at 3:48 PM ^
Gonna need an extra big helmet for that oversized melon. Or, as a cost saving measure, send him without one.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:19 PM ^
Maybe! I was in the He Gone camp, so I don't think the substance of the offer ever mattered, but the public perception is clearly that Michigan dithered and wasted an opportunity to lock Harbaugh down.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:33 PM ^
Michigan…read Warde…certainly dithered. But I don’t believe it mattered. Harbaugh believed his work here was done and there was unfinished business in the NFL. Harbaugh hired Don Yee to handle getting an NFL job and had no intention of returning. And that’s how it came down.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:20 PM ^
Also, have you ever accepted a last minute offer from your current job, or for that matter AT&T, which gave you everything you had been asking for, but only after your spent considerable time and energy finding the alternative?
Not me.
Especially if they've been saying "can't" do that, until suddenly they can.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:24 PM ^
Absolutely, the leak was to show that Warde had given Harbaugh everything he asked for, but he still wanted to jump ship to the NFL. It’s an obvious response to losing your head coach and not wanting to get heat for not giving up more, now there’s record that this was Harbaugh’s decision, not Warde not doing enough.
The timing of giving in, and the timing of leaking the contract all stink, and make it pretty obvious it was a PR save-face thing from the AD. Just more of the same.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:30 PM ^
And let's be honest here, it's not just Warde. A week ago a Regent tweeted that Michigan "isn't going to negotiate in the press" after word leaked that they were balking at guaranteeing JH's money against ncaa penalties.
In other words exactly the thing Michigan apparently leaked they were ready to do just yesterday! So Warde had help here...
January 25th, 2024 at 1:44 PM ^
Of course, all those tin pot dictators showing their power in contract negotiations washing their hands of their culpability.
And really, there is no consequences in academia for this behavior. The Regents are so connected they aren't going anywhere.
And what's going to happen to Manuel? Worst case is he gets told his contract won't be renewed and he finds another job at Harvard or Penn doing the same thing, but with even less consequences for inaction. Hell, Michigan would probably keep paying the length of the contract even if he did leave. It's happened before.
January 25th, 2024 at 3:36 PM ^
And really, there is no consequences in academia for this behavior. The Regents are so connected they aren't going anywhere.
In the state of Michigan, the Board of Regents/Trustees/Governors for UM, MSU, and Wayne State are elected statewide - they're politicians first.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:30 PM ^
My conspiracy theory is that the people on Jim’s payroll may have priorities above telling the absolute truth.
Unrelated, whoever is doing PR for Jim is a fucking genius.
January 25th, 2024 at 1:40 PM ^
Let's not be hasty.
Why don't we just cut his salary in half and let him know if he sucks next year, he's gone?
January 25th, 2024 at 1:41 PM ^
Maybe -- but the writing had been on the wall that he was seriously looking and most recently within the past week had at least a foot out the door. If it truly was CYA, I think this would have been leaked earlier.
January 25th, 2024 at 2:32 PM ^
He was looking, but it wasn't certain that he'd leave. Two years ago everyone was sure he was gone when he took the plane to Minneapolis, but those talks broke down. Even yesterday morning there were reports of snags in the negotiations with the Chargers.
I think U-M's negotiators were gambling that things would unfold the same way this time and didn't want to give up what leverage they had. They wanted to re-sign Harbaugh and still be protected in the (very small) chance the NCAA would slap a show cause on him.
January 25th, 2024 at 2:06 PM ^
And let's hope that Herbert doesn't apply 'let your actions speak so loudly that I can't hear your words'.
January 25th, 2024 at 2:11 PM ^
I have an additional thought. Harbaugh leaving will take much of the heat from future NCAA investigations and current investigations. It seems many in the investigating bodies have a hard-on for JH.
I would still put Warde in a rocket, but fire him off to a known Xenomorph colony so an alien explodes out of his chest.
January 25th, 2024 at 2:20 PM ^
Absolutely this, mGrowOld. And there's a lot of asses in that collective that needed covering by the time those leaks gushed out.
As I stated earlier this morning on a board thread, whichever regents who were involved and Warde's legal counsel seriously miscalculated and overplayed their hand. Warde can't singlehandedly overrule the decisions made at a level or two over his head.
I do wonder, however, how strongly Warde did or didn't fight (on a timely basis rather than waiting until the '11th hour' ) in favor of granting Harbaugh the legal protection/immunity that finally appeared to have been approved Wednesday.
If Warde was too passive thru the process, then yes, prepare the rocket Brian wrote of. But make it large enough to carry a number of asses.
January 25th, 2024 at 2:49 PM ^
The release by Warde was definitely a CYA. But that also doesn't mean that giving Harbaugh what he wanted would have kept him either. He (read: his legal counsel) very well could have clinged to the immunity point as a way of keeping negotiations open so that he could continue weighing or leveraging his other options. I admit it's not probable, but certainly possible.
IMO we all know the NCAA was after him at all costs. Given that, combined with the chatter around him in 2020, he justifiably had a reason to be concerned about potentially being axed down the road, whether as a result of NCAA rulings or under the guise them for other reasons. Doing so would be a for cause termination and he would forfeit the remainder of his contract.
Truthfully, for him, I think leaving a place that you've considered home for so long isn't just a business decision. It's an emotional and personal one too. I'm sure he went through that emotional rollercoaster throughout the entire process. It may seem like he was forcing Warde to agree to something, but from Harbaugh's perspective, I'm sure it felt like Warde was forcing him to take an enormous risk and leap of faith that he wasn't willing to make. By the time Warde reached back out, Harbaugh's emotions had already coped with and accepted the reality of leaving. When that happens, in any circumstance, the emotional door has been shut and there's really no going back.
January 25th, 2024 at 4:17 PM ^
"When you can no longer play, you coach, and when you can't coach, you die."
And at least this year he got to coach during the week. That wouldn't be true the next time we get caught leaving a toilet seat up, and sooner or later somebody's bound to.
I think the writing was already on the wall with the self-imposed suspension. Then the fight for the TRO was pulled (I think we got outmaneuvered but I could see it looking different from Harbaugh's POV). Maybe if the school's got $100 million at risk they'll fight it for real next time?
What I do NOT think is that Harbaugh was looking to get paid for not coaching. He wants to coach, the alternative is unthinkable. And he just got half a season of unthinkable.
January 25th, 2024 at 6:24 PM ^
The release by Warde was definitely a CYA. But that also doesn't mean that giving Harbaugh what he wanted would have kept him either. He (read: his legal counsel) very well could have clinged to the immunity point as a way of keeping negotiations open so that he could continue weighing or leveraging his other options. I admit it's not probable, but certainly possible.
I think it's very much probable. Harbaugh was faced with deciding between a firm (or firm enough, but for the details) job offer from UM and a still-hypothetical offer from an NFL team. He needed an approach with UM that would afford him enough time to find out if he could land an NFL offer that met his needs. He wasn't going to cut off his job search (by re-signing with UM) until the process had run its course fully. Making high demands and asking to postpone a start date to mid-February was a tactic to buy that time.
Was the Wednesday offer by UM to accept everything Harbaugh asked for (and I suspect that characterization of "everything" is overblown, as if there were a signed text of a contract awaiting Harbaugh's counter-signature) a Hail Mary? Yeah, sure. But one only throws a Hail Mary at the end of the 4th quarter. If you throw it in the 2nd quarter people call you an idiot.
January 25th, 2024 at 2:57 PM ^
I seriously doubt that the immunity offer was real. That's basically the root of my suggestion above because all it did was improve Harbaugh's public BATNA. As is obvious from the comments here, there is no reputational benefit for Warde, Santa, or the Regents because it looks like such transparent CYA material.
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