noncoaching staff

Via Licensed Twitter Troll Tim Kawakami:

Word out of Ann Arbor is that former 49ers personnel exec Tom Gamble is joining Jim Harbaugh's Michigan staff...

— Tim Kawakami (@timkawakami) July 20, 2017

This is considerably more interesting than your average noncoaching hire. Gamble's spent the last three decades as a player personnel type guy in the NFL, almost all of it with the 49ers. He overlapped with Harbaugh for a couple years, leaving after the 2012-13 season for a similar job with the Eagles. That move may have been the beginning of the end for Harbaugh's San Francisco tenure: respected, longtime personnel guy leaves, Baalke consolidates control, starts whisper campaign about Harbaugh, etc., etc., etc.

Gamble returned to the 49ers a couple years later* and was pushed out in February after John Lynch made a couple hires to replace him… including former Lions exec Martin Mayhew. BREAKING: 49ers still owned by Jed York. Kawakami is more or less the only person to have said anything useful about Gamble that I can find:

Of all the 49ers' Baalke guys, no question Tom Gamble was the most connected, experienced and normal. But regime-changes happen.

— Tim Kawakami (@timkawakami) February 23, 2017

"Most normal" is not often a descriptor applied to Harbaugh hires but given the context that might not mean a whole lot.

Another thing in the podcast...

After several ugly 49ers divorces, Tom Gamble's departure was straightforward & uneventful. That's progress pic.twitter.com/o2Ja1L6iRd

— Guy Haberman (@GuyHaberman) February 24, 2017

Gamble is almost certainly going to be a quasi-GM in Ann Arbor, organizing recruiting boards and talent acquisition attempts. It'll be a shift for him, and for Michigan, but if anything the guy seems overqualified to be a recruiting coordinator.

*[He got fired from the Eagles as part of an ugly power struggle between Chip Kelly and his GM, and arrived in San Francisco just before they hired… Chip Kelly. Kelly was pro-Gamble, at least.]