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While the hiring of Jim Harbaugh hasn’t brought the Big Ten championships and College Football Playoff appearances as anticipated when he was brought aboard in December 2014, that doesn’t preclude him from ESPN’s list of 25 best college football coaching hires in the last 25 years.
But for Stanford in 2006.
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However, there is a Wolverines coach that outranks him in the countdown. One that has brought championships, regional and national, alike.
Just sneaking into the last 25 years is the man who delivered a national championship, leading an undefeated Michigan team in 1997, and having coached the Wolverines until his departure after the 2007 season.
15. Lloyd Carr, Michigan
Hired: Nov. 13, 1995 (named interim coach on May 13, 1995)
What he inherited: Michigan was a consistent top-10 team during the Bo Schembechler-Gary Moeller transition, but came off consecutive 8-4 seasons. Moeller resigned in May 1995 after his arrest for a drunken incident at a restaurant. Michigan’s national title drought, meanwhile, had reached 47 years.
What happened next: Carr, a longtime Michigan assistant with no college head-coaching experience, led the Wolverines to the national title in his second full season as permanent coach. Michigan claimed at least a share of the Big Ten title in three of four seasons between 1997 and 2000, and would win five conference championships under Carr. The Wolverines posted four AP top-10 finishes and eight top-15 finishes under Carr, whose teams were ranked for all but nine games and finished ranked in 12 of his 13 seasons. Carr struggled against Ohio State during the second half of his tenure but still went 6-7 against the Buckeyes. (Michigan has just one win since.)
While Carr had solid success, as noted, in the first half of his tenure, post Ohio State’s hire of Jim Tressel, there was little success to be found, at least in that rivalry.
For the current team, given the disruption made by the Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke hires, it’s not an apples to apples comparison. In the seven years before Harbaugh’s arrival, Michigan was on a decline. Even though it had a winning record at 46-42 in that span, the 11-2 season in 2011 was the apex, giving way to 2014’s 5-7 record.
Before Carr took over, he certainly had a better trajectory to work with. The seven years before he took over the helm, Bo Schembechler and Gary Moeller combined to got 63-17-4.
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