jim harbaugh

[Patrick Barron]

According to reports, Michigan DL coach Mike Elston is headed to the L.A. Chargers to join Jim Harbaugh's staff: 

A player at Michigan from 1993-96, Elston had a long coaching career before joining the Wolverines in 2022. He coached most famously at Notre Dame, where he spent 2010-2021, first on special teams duties before moving to the defensive line. His work with ND drew wide acclaim and it was perceived as a major win when Harbaugh added Elston to the staff before the '22 season, after DL coach Shaun Nua joined Lincoln Riley's new USC staff. Over the past two seasons, Elston has helped coach and develop one of the most dominant defensive lines in Michigan history, one that ran roughshod over the Washington offensive line in the National Championship Game. 

The past week or two was a seeming battle between Michigan and the LA Chargers for Elston's services, but just like Ben Herbert, Harbaugh won out. Elston's vacancy means that's another coach that Sherrone Moore will have to hire, as the staff looks more and more like a nearly brand new one, rather than continuity from the previous regime. Moreover, Moore will have to work quickly to ensure that Michigan's defensive line is not raided by other schools in the portal, now that Elston has moved on. 

There is no content after the jump. 

4 hours and 26 minutes

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1. Weird Jim Harbaugh Era Highlights

Starts at 1:00

There was too much to remember, so we crowd sourced. Sleepovers, satellite camps, the pope, and fun recruiting shenanigans. The Harbaugh era kind of starts and ends with Lou Holtz. There was a lot of diving into pools while fully dressed. People who cover the pope have been watching to see if he ever wears the Jordans that Jim gifted him. Don't drink out of the public fountains in Rome. You ever just grab a handful of meatballs? Character growth arc - Jim Harbaugh and chickens. He told a Peruvian Catholic priest "I'm in the Notre Dame ass-kicking business." Never forget "the white board", what's your favorite quote from it? He's directed traffic for hours. Jim Harbaugh war dad. Alejandro continues to be a real go-getter. Make sure you swipe Freddy P Soft off your shoulder. 

[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]

[Bryan Fuller]

Well: Jim Harbaugh decided to go out on top, at least as far as college goes. As you have no doubt already heard, he's taken the Chargers job. Michigan is already in the process of hiring Sherrone Moore and will have a press conference announcing it as soon as they can. Technically they're supposed to post the job for a week before they can hire anyone, but IIRC that's some sort of Department of Education diversity initiative and Sherrone Moore is about to be the first black head coach in program history, so they're applying for a waiver.

Let's get some h2 tags up in here.

 

This was probably inevitable

Harbaugh had flirted with the NFL the past two offseason and just culminated a nine-year career with three Big Ten titles and Michigan's first national title since 1997. He checked one of the items on his bucket list (a term popularized by the 2007 film Bucket List) and there are only two left: win a Super Bowl and beat Kathy Lee Gifford in an arm-wrestling contest. He cannot do the former at Michigan.

I don't think money really matters to Harbaugh, nor do I think he "needed to feel loved." He has more money than he knows what to do with. He mows his own lawn and one day I went into Home Depot and literally the first person I saw was Harbaugh, no doubt there to do some errand 99.999% of multi-millionaires delegate. And if the man wanted to feel loved and appreciated he would not be leaving a Michigan fanbase still in the outer stratosphere for an NFL team that almost literally has no fans.

I think the thought process went like this: can I win the Super Bowl here? Will they hire the GM I want? Will I have full control otherwise? The answer to the first is "yes, I am Jim Harbaugh." Once the answers to the latter two were also yes, Michigan could have given Harbaugh a fully guaranteed 16 million dollars a year and a rider that he gets to pull out every hair in Tony Petitti's eyebrows and it wouldn't have mattered.

This does not happen to other college coaches who win titles because the transition from one to the other almost never works. In the past 20 years there has been one coach who had an extended, successful college tenure after a successful NFL one. His name is Jim Harbaugh. Pete Carroll is the only other guy in the picture, and Carroll had a 33-31 NFL record before taking the Seahawks job. Is the NFL going to hire Dabo? In a word, lol. I remember what being an NFL coach did to Nick friggin' Saban. I would pay money to see Dabo coach an NFL team.

[AFTER THE JUMP: keep Herbert, keep Herbert, keep Herbert]

a game for the ages in The Granddaddy of Them All 

In return for..?

revelations stop

shouldn't they be suspending chris creighton instead 

unfortunately, it's not pronounced that way

another midwestern athletic ball of clay

Awooga!

Don't try to out-happy, Happy. 

answering your burning questions