Jim Harbaugh - People think he's a butthole, but he's not
Former 49ers CB defends Jim Harbaugh and blasts Alex Boone. Some other stuff about tonight's Real Sports episode too.
http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2015/04/former_49er_defends_jim_harbau.html
Plus one to you (and karmic +1 to Taggart) for use of "butthole" in polite conversation. One of the instances where the "cleaned up" version of an epithet is worse than the "dirty" version.
our friend Mad Hatter being nutty with the thread title and then I read the article.
"Harbaugh-NOT a Butthole." I like it.
April 21st, 2015 at 10:51 AM ^
whats up man? hurtin for clicks again?
I am almost convinced you are Nick Baumgardner. Don't get me wrong, I like a good read just like the next guy, but I always feel like your posts lead me to one of his MLive articles.
With that being said. Thank you.
one of the sites I check for news pretty much every morning. They usually have some Michigan content that's worth posting, and since Baumgardner is the Michigan reporter, the stories are usually his.
Also, how do you pass up an opportunity to use the word butthole in a thread title?
we got ya...
Just a general question. On a scale of 1-10, 5 being an average amount, how interested would you say you are in consipracy theories?
my wife thinks I'm crazy
BTW, I can't remember the last time a new coach at any program has gotten this much press. He's everywhere in the media. The guy can't eat a pizza or wear non khaki pants without making the news. I think that's a good sign.
In college, there haven't been many comparisons. This list ran around time of the hiring. The only ones that seem like they're on the Harbaugh level in terms of huge program getting a big name are USC with Carroll (sorta the blueprint for transforming a down program plus yknow, free Hummers and houses) and Alabama with Saban. I can't think of one in college basketball either.
Hell, Harbaugh was a massive topic during the college football playoff! The frenzy is kinda amazing.
April 21st, 2015 at 11:33 AM ^
Except that most USC fans HATED the Carroll hiring, which is obviously amusing in retrospect. I don't remember how Saban was received, but he hadn't done too well in Miami.
Maybe Charlie Weis got this kind of attention, but I can't think of anyone else. It is remarkably unprecedented.
April 21st, 2015 at 12:03 PM ^
Unless they are your coach, they are butthole. Sabn, Meyer, Dantonio, Carroll, Bobby Knight, Coach K, Thad Matta, etc... I did not include Harbaugh, because he is obviously not a butthole.
April 21st, 2015 at 11:30 AM ^
The "complaint" is that he pushes guys too hard and demanded too much...and also deliveres winning results from losing programs in every instance.
These are exactly the type of thing I want to read, and confirm to me that he's at UofM for the long haul. Coaches in college are the stars, and we'll allow him to be his special brand of crazy for the next 20 years while our players get 3-5 years of that intensive treatment. I think we might see a few more early entries than we've had (because they'll have the opportunity and maybe be a little worn out), but we're going to win football games and they're going to be better football players for it.
Michigan will be a national powerhouse within the next 3 years. I have never been so sure about anything.
I agree 100%. I only see this "news" as a positive thing. We went too long with coaches that seemed to want to be more of a buddy to the players and not a coach. These are 18-22 year olds, they need someone with intensity to get the most out of them. In the end, they will go through 3-4 years of hell (hopefully win a few B1G championships and maybe a NC) and come out stronger for either the NFL or life after football. Let Harbaugh, Harbaugh all the live long Harbaugh day.
April 21st, 2015 at 10:07 AM ^
Not that it's coming from you, but I take issue with the "college guys are only around 3-4 years so it's OK" angle. I think this is just a nicer form of the same butthurt press. It doesn't do anything to the insinuation that Harbaugh is abusive other than dress it up a little.
I'm going to be charitable to Boone and assume he was toeing the party line while Harbaugh was there and got out the knives once he left. Thing is, a lot of NFL players move around on the 3-4 year timescale, so even if his comments make sense, the above justification doesn't.
If there's a relevant difference between college and NFL for Harbaugh's style, it's not that 18-22 year olds can use a good old-fashioned butt-kicking. OK a lot of them could, but that doesn't get Harbaugh out of hot water. Rather, it's that when you're that age, you're basically immortal. I abused my health like crazy, partially because I was a terrible procrastinator but partly because I felt I could. When you're 35 (and Boone isn't) and have been playing competitive football for at least half your life, you can't go 100mph, every play, practice or game. Your body is a dwindling resource and you need to use what's left of it carefully or you won't be good to go on gameday.
In other words, if he's intense, Harbaugh's style is more suited to players who benefit from being pushed to the limit. That's not necessarily abusive or there'd be reports out of San Diego or Stanford of disgruntled and crippled players. The consensus I hear is intensity, but college students feast on intensity.
Mind you, I won't carry water for Harbaugh if a real scandal does surface during his tenure. But I don't put much stock in an NFL veteran saying he was worked too hard.
Yes, and we know Boone IS a butthole.
April 21st, 2015 at 10:56 AM ^
Tim Kawakami, our favorite Twitter troll from the San Jose Mercury News, went all in on Alex Boone's flip yesterday:
Harbaugh was a different kind of guy with the 49ers–much more volatile than McLellan, obviously, and with a style that certainly can wear on players and executives over time.
One thing Harbaugh isn’t: Repressed. Not in any way. He’s ALL up front and in your face and there’s no unexpressed emotion.
That was good for the 49ers for many years, and then it might’ve worn down… though that’s a judgement call. Fair to think either side of that one, though if 8-8 is the depth of lousiness, then let’s see what Jim Tomsula delivers in 2015.
Again, we all can see that Harbaugh might wear on people less driven than he is.That’s what Alex Boone was getting at in his recent HBO, and again, I’m sure there were many 49ers players who got weary of Harbaugh’s demanding, piercing presence at times.
-They had two separate locker rooms last season, after all. That was a symbol of everything.
But Boone of course is the guy who all last season went out of his way to ridicule reports about Harbaugh’s iffy future; Boone seemed to take it upon himself to be a spokesman for the locker room… then… and again now, but in totally contradictory stances.
During the season, Boone said everybody loved Harbaugh.
Now Boone says Harbaugh might’ve been clinically insane and the players disliked him.
You know what that makes Boone? Well, it sure doesn’t make him a credible team spokesman.
This is what I’ve thought about Boone long before his recent comments: Boone habitually exaggerates his and his teammates’ feelings in order to get the most attention possible. For himself.
Of course, as I say that about Boone, we all know 49ers management is loving, loving, loving him for the recent comments. Which he knows, too.
After his holdout last season, Boone wants Jed York, Paraag Marathe and Baalke to love him again. His comments will help that. Maybe it’ll help get him a new extension.And Boone did this through a weird, obvious contradiction of everything he’d said previous, which, come to think of it, is probably how loyal members of a repressed organization have to communicate with each other.
Since they don’t, you know, actually talk to each other.
April 21st, 2015 at 11:41 AM ^
April 21st, 2015 at 11:43 AM ^
is obviously retarded. Or at the very least in dire need of an editor. That was almost unreadable.
April 21st, 2015 at 12:02 PM ^
I pulled that from a blog post he made on his thoughts on the yesterday's activity in the Bay Area (Todd McLellan firing by the Sharks & Alex Boone's flip on Harbaugh). Some of it was cut and paste verbatim what he had already posted on Twitter. It wasn't meant to be an formal column or article for print. It also makes more sense if you read the whole blog post. The post compares the Sharks and 49ers and draws a parallel between McLellan and Harbaugh's firing. Both of them may have been the most competent people in their respective organizations.
April 21st, 2015 at 12:10 PM ^
I thought it was excerpts from a column, not a blog post.
He's still an asscown.
April 21st, 2015 at 12:53 PM ^
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retarded
April 22nd, 2015 at 10:35 AM ^
get it, do you....?
I just reject the idea of political correctness. We need to go back to calling things what they actually are. If I lose my leg, I'm not "differently abled", I'm crippled.
You only have to deal with Buckeye Buttholes when you play them.
From Sports Illustrated, September 14, 1981
"O.K., from a distance Bo comes on like a yahoo. And that's Bo's public image. He has had horrible problems with the press, which has this nasty habit of wanting to talk to him when he loses, his mother's advice notwithstanding. But even if the media's timing were better, it probably wouldn't make much difference, because Bo hates the press. Not just a little. A lot. The Voice of Michigan Football, Bob Ufer, says he has tried to get Schembechler to be nicer to the media. "But he told me," says Ufer, " 'Bob, if I win, I don't need the press, and if I lose, they can't help me.' " Ufer defends Schembechler, whose record at Michigan over 12 years is 114-21-3; Bo's teams have won the Big Ten title twice and tied for it seven times.
Says Ufer, "Bo has two categories of things in his life: what matters and what doesn't matter. What matters is football. What doesn't matter is everything else. Bo is the kind of guy who is so dedicated that he doesn't realize how he's coming off." So while some coaches like to go out and drink with sportswriters, Bo would prefer to break out in warts.
Until a couple of years ago, he would routinely storm out of press conferences, kick reporters out of the sessions ("Don't be offended," says one of Bo's friends. "He'd kick Millie out, too"), make himself unavailable and order his players not to talk. Talking very softly once at a press conference, he was asked to speak up. "I'm speaking as loudly as I can," said Bo softly and arrogantly. And in a memorable set-to on Oct. 1, 1979, Schembechler gave an absolutely unnecessary push to a publicity-seeking college newspaper reporter.
Yet too much is read into all this. As Don Canham, athletic director at Michigan, says, "Bo is oblivious to life."
Enjoy another decade of irrelevance.
Loydd Carr was a bit of a ButtHole and I still love him!
his halftime interviews. My Dad and I would always crack up.The phrase "there's no such thing as a stupid question" is not a true statement.
There is no such thing as a stupid question.
Only stupid people who ask them.
... just stupid people.
April 21st, 2015 at 11:38 AM ^
God I loved him. "Why would you ask a dumb question like that?"
answered "Why would you ask a dumb question like that?" it might have been the greatest moment in the history of those halftime BS interviews. Every coach in America has been wanting to answer like that. Very few had the job security, the nutsack, and general orneriness that Lloyd Carr had to actually do it.
Not saying he SHOULD have done it because, yah, you're not supposed to actually say what is going through your head. But I still loved it. Those interviews are so pointless and annoying even when the questions are halfway decent. When the questions are stupid it's like "Just shut up and let me go talk to my team."
Is there any surprise Alex Boone went to Ohio State?
Boone is being obliterated in the press for this, for the most part. I read the ESPN article re. this and actually read the comments - don't ever read the comments - and all of them were either 49er's fans defending Harbaugh or various levels of "Boone's soft and he'll be a loser now that Harbaugh's gone." When even the ESPN comments pass on the chance to diss a big personality, you know the day is won.
I still don't get the motivation for it. Is it York and Baalke asking him to spread misinformation to discredit Harbaugh, or is it a Buckeye thing now? Very strange for him to pull a 180 on this.
My bet: he'll retract or soften his words on this in the next day or so. It's probably true to an extent, he did feel this way - Harbaugh will ride people, we know that. Boone probably got caught up in a discussion with an HBO reporter, and when he started along this critical line, they were giving him lapdog looks (better story, and they were right - Boone's comments have been the sizzle so far).
York and Baalke...Well also the rest of the NFC West. Unless you won the Super Bowl in the last four years, you would take the last four seasons of Niner football.