What were we talking about 10 years ago? Jim Harbaugh of course

Submitted by Maize.Blue Wagner on

I'm working on This Month in MGoBlog History and couldn't help but share this already. It was the beginning of camp in 2007 when Mike Hart reacted to Harbaugh's earlier comments about academic standards at Michigan. 

The comments on this MVictors post are entertaining. 

As a Michigan alumnus and former member of the track team, I wholeheartedly endorse the “excomminucation” of Jim Harbaugh. Everyone makes decisions in life. Harbaugh decided to divorce himself from the Michgan family when he threw our school under the bus to make himself and his current employer look better.

I’ve hated USC ever since I was a kid, and I’ve never once rooted for them in any game in 45 years of watching college football. I will make an exception this fall when they play Stanford.

Harbaugh is a douche bag and he deserves all he is getting. I doubt he will last at Stanford, as I am sure these antics are not really appreciated by the Stanford trustees, afterall the last thing they want is a douche bag coming and ruining a legacy setup by the likes of Bill Walsh.

Brian mostly focused on how Hart inadvertantly told everyone that this would be Carr's last year. but he unfortunately had to add this:

So, for the record, I have no respect left for Harbaugh either. The only person he's looking out for is himself, and in doing so he's harming the program that put him in a position to lose by 80 to USC this fall.

Yikes, on October 6 Stanford would beat USC 24-23.

By the end of the month, this would be far from the minds of the football team and the fans...

 

PopeLando

August 5th, 2017 at 12:06 AM ^

Personally, that was the moment I decided that "yeah, he's a dick, but he's a dick you want on your side."

And as much as I love Mike Hart, he should never be put in front of a microphone.

FrankMurphy

August 5th, 2017 at 2:42 AM ^

I don't think anyone needs to feel embarassed: Harbaugh's comments were impulsive and ill-advised, he has since publicly regretted them and mended fences with Lloyd Carr, and we have all come to realize that his intensely competitive personality and penchant for ruffling feathers are what make him a great coach. The universe is unfolding as it should.

FrankMurphy

August 5th, 2017 at 9:59 PM ^

God, I remember all the drama with that excruciatingly long coaching search. I was living overseas at the time, and I would check mgoblog.blogspot.com (yes, that was the URL back then) every morning to see if anything happened while I was asleep. At first, I just expected a holding pattern until LSU wrapped up its season. But then I woke up and read about the whole sailboat incident and Les Miles saying something about his Damn Strong Football Team™, and that was that for Bill Martin's chances at hiring who we all thought at the time was the best candidate. Then I woke up and read that Martin was very publicly courting Greg Schiano and had a lengthy meeting with Schiano in New York City that he did as good a job of keeping secret as a tablecloth draped over an elephant. Then I woke up and read that Schiano actually turned us down, and it became clear that this search was turning into a disaster. Then I began obsessively checking MGoBlog every time I got in front of a computer, even if it was someone else's computer. Then nothing happened for about a week while alumni and former players publicly groused about how Martin was mismanaging the search. Then I woke up and read that Rich Rodriguez was now in the mix, seemingly out of nowhere. Then I thought that Michigan would never hire Rich Rod, and that he was probably stringing us along anyway just like he did with Alabama. Then I woke up and read that the search was over and that Rich Rod was our new coach. And there was much rejoicing.

Then the next seven years happened.

canzior

August 5th, 2017 at 6:46 AM ^

I love and appreciate that you do these. So far they are before I joined so I like catching up. That being said, I'll be skipping this months edition because I'm still not ok with it. And to make it worse BR report is doing a piece on how amazing 2007 was, maybe the greatest season of college football ever and how it altered college football. WVU losing to Pitt brings Rich Rod to AA, LSU doesn't get a national title, etc etc. Somehow I am lumping in Rutgers to the B1G as another shitty result of 2007.

quigley.blue

August 5th, 2017 at 7:06 AM ^

I don't know that the basic reaction was wrong, or that anything has changed.  Harbaugh can be an ass and said an ass thing.  Now he's he's our ass.  I don't think anybody can be faulted for feeling the way they did when he said those things, or for being happy that we are benefiting from similar stuff now.

Don

August 5th, 2017 at 10:06 AM ^

"At the afternoon press conference on Dec. 19 for the new head coach of the Cardinal football team, Jim Harbaugh recalled how he spent three summers working on the field of the old stadium while his father was coaching at Stanford—and how his football aspirations have now come full circle.



"I used to stare down at that field as I was stenciling those numbers," Harbaugh told reporters, athletes and others who crowded into the Arrillaga Family Sports Center's Kissick Auditorium. "I so very badly wanted to go to Stanford and play for the Cardinal. … This was my number-one choice all along."

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/january10/harbaughsr-011007.html

Harbaugh's comments about academics at Michigan were the flashpoint, but it also didn't help his case among Wolverine fans when they read these words Harbaugh said in Palo Alto. Correctly or not, they had simply assumed that Harbaugh was a Michigan guy from the beginning, and now they were being told his heart had been with some other program.

Bando Calrissian

August 5th, 2017 at 6:22 PM ^

And yet when he came to the pep rally in Santa Monica for the Rose Bowl in 2006-7, he gave one of the most rah-rah, 100% passionate Michigan Man speeches I've ever seen. Even while wearing a Cardinal sweatshirt. You say what you have to say in a given situation, and he had an undeniable connection to Stanford.




Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad

Bando Calrissian

August 5th, 2017 at 6:19 PM ^

Said it then and I still think that Harbaugh wasn't wrong. The problem was Hart and the team publicly engaging, and JH tripling down and making it worse. He says it once and it stays there, it's probably no big deal.




Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad