The path not taken: Harbaugh and the KU job
Harbaugh walked over to the bar and asked if anyone wanted a drink. Then he emptied a can of Coke, put in a rather sizable dip of chewing tobacco and used the can as a spittoon.
“I just want to be Jim Harbaugh for you all to see who I am,” he told the room.
But in the interview, Harbaugh was honest. If the NFL called, he would be tempted. And if Michigan called, he was gone. Still, just two years removed from the Orange Bowl season, Kansas had the chance to land Jim Harbaugh.
“Harbaugh would have taken it,” said Clint Bowen, a former Kansas assistant coach. “I was talking to him at the time. He would have taken the job.”
Instead, Perkins hired Turner Gill.
April 26th, 2022 at 10:22 PM ^
Well, eventually KU hired Charlie Weiss and secured his decided schematic advantage. So there is that.
Thar she blows!!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 27th, 2022 at 12:43 AM ^
At some stage you would think Harbaugh would get huge props from recruits and parents for his brutal honesty.
He does. It happened literally this cycle.
His problem is, nearly everyone that talks to the press lies 100% of the time (in business/entertainment/sports). It's so expected and assumed that people think Harbaugh is lying too, because they cannot conceive of him being different.
Alas, Kansas is left with a lack of enthusiasm known all too well by mankind.
I saw this story this morning. I suppose it's true, but it seems so weird.
Even in December 2009, despite being 2 years removed from an Orange Bowl, KU football simply had nowhere near the upside that Stanford football had. Stanford was coming off that 55-21 "what's your deal?" win over USC, Andrew Luck had just had a fabulous first year as starter.
JH's wife has some KCMO roots, but that would seem to be the only reason for the move - a move which would have (1) been to a historically irrelevant program, (2) by a man who was a then-rising meteoric star in the biz.
Wonder if “sure, I’ll come to KU for $$$” and they passed... because what they paid for butt-front Charlie was left out of the article.
I believe the correct term is “Century of Disaster” when describing KU football.
April 27th, 2022 at 12:52 PM ^
Kansas Football was good for a minute under Mark Mangino.
But evidently he was an asshole to all around him so at the first opportunity he got fired. After Turner Gill got run over the wise administrators at Kansas thought the key to football success resided in the size of the head coach.
Not so much.
Ah, the old front butt. Whatever happened to him and why would anyone play football for such a slob of a human being?
I am very fond of indulgences in great food and beverages (alcohol) that come with a lot of calories, but for the life of me I can't imagine how any male body ends up shaped that way.
Was Kansas football ever good?
They were the 2nd ranked team in the country on Thanksgiving Day 2007. They finished the year number 7, 12-1 record with an Orange Bowl victory.
That plus 1995 are their only 10+ win seasons over the last 110 years. But they have had a couple years as a shooting star.
Oddly enough, though, few schools can say they've produced better running backs than Kansas. Gale Sayers and John Riggins both went there.
Yep. Barry, of course, is originally from Kansas. In theory he could have been a home-grown Jayhawk like Sayers and Riggins were, but KU didn't even offer him!
He had 4 offers: Iowa State, Tulsa, Oklahoma State and, the only one of the 4 from the Sunflower State, D-2 Emporia State.
Been a while, though. They're long gone, like a turkey through the corn, with their long pyjamas on.
April 27th, 2022 at 12:03 AM ^
jesus christ, can you imagine what barry would have done to d2 kids? i went to grand valley, and watching some of their NFL guys ruin people in games over the years was pretty terrifying (matt judon was particularly scary), but barry would have just juked those poor kids out of their (partial) scholarships.
Same, went to Hillsdale College and watched Joique Bell singlehandedly keep Wayne State in games. Bell won the D2 Heisman Trophy in 09 with these absurd numbers:
- 326 Carries
- 2084 Yards (6.4 an attempt!)
- 29 Rushing TD's and 3 receiving TD's
- 189.5 game average rushing - 198 average in total offense each game
..... on a team that went 6-5. Hillsdale beat them by 31 that year and Bell still had 165 yards on only 24 carries. Just bonkers.
Which makes Barry's final year at OK St even more ridiculous. Versus D1 players and he did this:
- 344 Carries
- 2628 yards (7.6 an attempt)
- 37 TDs + 2 receiving
- 237.5 yards per game.
April 27th, 2022 at 10:23 AM ^
GOAT 🐐 and no one will convince we otherwise.
During my college years I watched Wally Szczerbiak play MAC basketball competition. In his last two years it was completely unfair. Not a hell of a lot different with Roethlisberger.
And at Oklahoma State he was stuck behind Thurman Thomas!!! What a backfield.
Fire up that diesel!!! Damn Riggins was a gem on and off the field
April 26th, 2022 at 11:36 PM ^
Offensive coordinator was Ed Warinner.
April 27th, 2022 at 12:03 AM ^
2007 was an insane year. Kansas, Boston College, Cal, South Florida, and West Virginia were all #2 at some point. Missouri was #1 going into conference championship weekend. And then there was some other stuff, which doesn't need to be talked about.
April 27th, 2022 at 12:49 AM ^
2007 seemed to be approximately when the dark clouds thickened and strange events began to occur.
you're not supposed to say the word!
its known as 200X on these here internets
April 27th, 2022 at 12:28 PM ^
I remember #2 Cal playing Oregon State after #1 LSU had just lost that day. Cal was driving to tie or win the game with no timeouts, down 3 in the redzone, and the QB made a boneheaded, Miltonian scramble, got tackled, and the clock ran out. They were basically #1 for a half hour. Then finished the season 7-6.
April 27th, 2022 at 12:32 AM ^
Missouri beat KU to win the Big 12 north. in 2007.
For one shining moment. Oh wrong sport.
That's a really interesting parallel universe that I'd never heard about. Lots of well-known guys on the interview list.
In 2009 Gill didn't look like a horrible hire. Uninspiring, maybe, based on what he'd done at Buffalo.
I think you could argue that it would have been a bad time to take that job, with the school just a short distance from a historical season.
You also wonder why Harbaugh would consider leaving Stanford with the program still on the way up.
Best part: “I set out to find the best,” Zenger said, “and I found Charlie Weis.”
Most interesting part: Where Harbaugh said he'd be "gone" if Michigan called. That didn't seem to matter much in early 2011.
On Harbaugh & Michigan in 2011: A.) Dave Brandon fumbled the bag and it’s been well documented and B.) I don’t know if he realized he’d have an offer on the table for an NFL head coaching job so soon, especially from a team in his backyard that he wouldn’t have to move his family for and had some decent players in place & $30M+ of cap space
April 26th, 2022 at 10:41 PM ^
“I set out to find the best,” Zenger said, “and I found Charlie Weis.”
That's known as a Zenger zinger.
April 27th, 2022 at 10:39 AM ^
Your comment on parallel universes makes me think about if ESPN/Disney decide to take a page from the Marvel book and make a separate "What If" series, but instead focus on college football. The sheer amount of ways you could go would be limitless:
What if Les took the job in '07?
What if RichRod went to Alabama instead of Michigan? How would the dynamic in the SEC have been different over the last 15 years? Where would Saban have ended up instead?
What if Meyer had stayed at Florida a season longer, or OSU had to fire Tressel a year earlier? What if Meyer just decided he flat out didn't want the job and wanted to commentate instead? Would OSU still be the powerhouse that it is?
What if Harbaugh took the job in 2011? Would he have left for the NFL eventually anyway due to consistently butting heads with DB, and if so, who would be Michigan's coach right now?
April 27th, 2022 at 12:28 PM ^
If Pat White hadn't dislocated his thumb in the second quarter of the 2007 Backyard Brawl against Pitt, WVU beats Pitt, finishes the season undefeated and ranked no lower than #2 and gets to play in the BCS championship game. RR obviously stays on as WVU coach, forcing Michigan to look elsewhere for an heir to Carr. Since LSU had two regular season losses, WVU would probably have faced one-loss OSU in the title game.
Which means Les Miles would have been available for Michigan after the 2007 season. The rumors about Carr and other higher-ups in the Michigan football family being adamantly opposed to Miles notwithstanding, Miles would have been an easy choice on paper.
Greg Schiano. If WVU beats Pitt in 2007 ...... I think Schiano winds up being U-M's next coach.
Oof, that's a tough one to assess...if WVU beat Pitt, a very decent but definitely not great OSU team probably would have won the national title (or better yet, split it with LSU) but with the hiring process stretching out until January 2nd or 3rd, we almost certainly would have ended up with Miles and avoided the whole RichRod era.
Having a hard time deciding if I'd prefer this alternate universe or the situation that actually unfolded...
Didn't Harbaugh go to SF in 2011, which was a year after this? That same year he was reportedly offered the job at Michigan and would have been the second-highest-paid college coach. He then used the offer to negotiate for more money from SF and still took less than what Michigan was reportedly offering.
There is no chance Kansas was going to be able to keep him from leaving for the NFL or Michigan in 2011.
These were precisely my thoughts when seeing the article posted elsewhere. Harbaugh went to the NFL very shortly thereafter and told KU he’d bolt for either the NFL or UM at the first opportunity. Can’t blame KU for not offering the position after that interview. Maybe if they thought they’d get him for 3 years, but he was clearly on the upward swing after turning Stanford around and they had to know an NFL job was going to be available every year even if they thought RR would be a UM lifer. Too much risk on the risk/reward spectrum to hire him when he probably won’t last a season because someone else was going to take him anyway.
Look, I would bet at any given week between 2005 and 2011 that about Harbaugh could have been tempted to go to just about any college program if it caught his eye.
Hell, I could have seen him saying, “im catholic, and Boston College is a catholic institution and if the call, fuck you Stanford”
Ha. I'd love to hear him saying this:
“I'm catholic, and Notre Dame is a catholic institution, but fuck Notre Dame.”
I don't believe there was ever a real chance in hell that Jim Harbaugh was going to leave Stanford for a God-forsaken program like Kansas. I bet he met with them simply to placate Sarah.
put you over 120k
Wasn't even paying attention, so thanks for the head's-up. Can I exchange it for crypto?
April 26th, 2022 at 10:43 PM ^
I bet you could mine your points data and find some crypto hidden in there. I also don't know what the hell I'm talking about. So keep that in mind.
April 27th, 2022 at 11:24 AM ^
Don could take a screenshot of it and call it an NFT. Big money in NFTs.
/s
Here I was thinking that Robert Frost was authoring a new version of my favorite poem. I was sure it would make all the difference!
April 26th, 2022 at 10:47 PM ^
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
Kansas football could not travel both
And be one program, long they stood
Saw the "Severe Tire Damage" sign
And managed four flats in the undergrowth"