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College football is in an interesting sphere nowadays. There’s the haves and the have-nots. And in the age of the College Football Playoff, the Ricky Bobby quote from Talladega Nights is quite apropos: “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh had an interesting hour-long interview with his childhood friend Jay Nordlinger, who’s a senior editor at conservative magazine National Review, who asked him about the nature of coaching. As Nordlinger points out, sometimes the ‘better team’ is one that isn’t one that’s well-coached as much as one that might just have better players. The conversation wasn’t Michigan-specific — though Harbaugh is obviously the Wolverines head coach and he and Nordlinger forged their bond in Ann Arbor.
But Harbaugh does think that a coach can be accurately judged by the win-loss metric. However, beyond that, he explains his mentality as such, and why the quarterback position — which Harbaugh played at Michigan and in the NFL — gets little accolades but a lot of judgment thrown their way when things don’t work out.
“I think coaches that win, that’s a pretty good measure how good a coach somebody is,” Harbaugh said. “The thing I read something about Phil Jackson that stood out the most, he said, ‘The teamwork, like love, is ephemeral.’
“The quarterback, I would probably – gets too much credit or get too much blame. I know they get a lot of blame, the quarterback, and probably not enough credit when the team does win. Coaching – you’re an advice giver, you’re an organizer. You’re a planner on all contingencies. I think just up close, coach is always around, always.
“For whatever this is worth: I always seemed to play better for coaches that I respected and coaches that I liked and were a good role model. And you knew that they worked hard and poured their heart and soul into it and respected them when they – I wanted to be like them. The way their principles, their morals, their teaching ability – I liked being around them. I think probably a lot of that that coach believed in me as a player. Kind of the finest qualities I saw in coaches, starting with my dad, right off the bat. Couldn’t have a better example. Your dad, Tom Minick, Bo Schembechler, Mike Ditka, Lindy Infante, Al Davis – I’d just try to glean as much as I could from those men and Ted Marchibroda. Try to be like my dad, when it was all said and done.”
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Harbaugh expounded a bit on his relationship with one of the aforementioned famed coaches.
We hear a lot about his relationship with Michigan’s Schembechler — which, given that he’s followed in his figurative footsteps, becoming the head coach in Ann Arbor, is an easy point of comparison. But Harbaugh also played for hall of fame head coach Mike Ditka, who drafted him to quarterback the Chicago Bears after the 1987 season.
Nordlinger shared that he always cringed when he saw Ditka yelling at Harbaugh on the sidelines, but Harbaugh notes how fond of the legendary Bears coach he was, even before he arrived in Chicago.
“There was no doubt he knew what he was doing,” Harbaugh said. “We had a great player-coach relationship. You talk about being star struck by somebody, when I first went to the Bears, I really liked him. And he was such a great football player himself. I was always around him and thinking, ‘If we were teammates, I would go to war for him and he would go to war, would have your back if he was on your team.’ And I always felt like that as a player.”
Every year, there’s always some speculation about Harbaugh returning to the NFL ranks. It’s waned in recent years, and it’s a tactic that the Wolverines head coach often says is used by Michigan’s enemies to detract from its recruiting efforts.
For some coaches, yes, the grind of college sports isn’t as preferable as the pros. There’s recruiting, which in and of itself is a year-long job. Before he left the San Francisco 49ers to become Michigan’s coach, some speculated that Harbaugh wouldn’t relish the opportunity to coach at his alma mater, due to the various extracurriculars that a college coach must partake in.
But, when it comes to the actual job of coaching, Harbaugh says there are few differences between coaching in college and coaching in the NFL.
“It’s really not that much different,” Harbaugh said. “There’s so many similarities to both. Definitely college – they’re not ready to take care of their own family, be the head of their own households. They definitely still need advice and you can be that person in their life. Their favorite coach, their favorite teacher. By the time guys get to pro ball, they’ve probably already had their favorite coach or their favorite teacher up to that point. And they are ready to be – they’re grown. They’re grown men. They’re ready to be the head of their own household. But that’s really the only difference. There’s so many similarities. It’s still like being on a ball team. It’s still building a ball team. It’s trying to build your favorite ball team you were ever on, whether it’s as a player or as a coach, that’s really what you’re striving for, to build that team, the team, the team, as Bo Schembechler would say. Trying to make it like your favorite little league ball team you were on, that’s what you’re striving for.”