In the future (hopefully very distant future), what does Michigan do to honor Harbaugh?

Submitted by Reno Drew on January 19th, 2024 at 3:43 PM

In the vein of what players from today will be the coaches in 20 years...

Yost Ice area

Crisler area (sorry, it will never be center to me)

Schembechler Hall

Lloyd Carr Tunnel

Give Coach Harbaugh's last three years and the National Championship, let's start the speculation on what Michigan would do to honor Harbaugh?  Some new building on the athletic campus?  Renaming something?  

1WhoStayed

January 19th, 2024 at 3:48 PM ^

Nope. No man is bigger than The Team. No coach is bigger than The Team…

Ok, maybe the locker room since that’s where The Team gets together before/after games?

sdogg1m

January 19th, 2024 at 5:36 PM ^

You and I can duke this out on a forum but you don't hear Bo's former players calling for his statue to be removed. Those players have greater influence with the University than you or I. Bo, himself, wouldn't have like the idea of a statue anyway. When the team was winning a national championship we were inundated with Bo Schembechler statements.

 

Bando Calrissian

January 19th, 2024 at 5:50 PM ^

Jon Vaughn isn't a former Bo player? Huh.

The "Bo's Boys" faction has always held outmoded weight, and in this instance they're exceptionally out of touch with basic humanity. Don't really care what they think, frankly, and just because Harbaugh quotes Bo doesn't make their cruel nostalgia and victim-blaming any better.

Brodie

January 19th, 2024 at 5:52 PM ^

man you need to be 40 years old for there to even be half a chance you remember Bo coaching a game. 50+ to have been reverential of him growing up. Generational change will bring that name and statue down. His last game as coach is further removed from the lives of today's fans than Fritz Crisler's was from the lives of the Boomers who still form the Cult of Schembechler. 

When Jim is gone and Warde is gone, the people who replace them will almost certainly have no deep personal connection to Bo. And those replacements will be under immense pressure to yeet him from his place of honor. 

Sopwith

January 19th, 2024 at 5:10 PM ^

History repeatedly teaches us the lesson that building statues to “great” men is doesn’t always age well. Men are highly fallible and the past sometimes renders a verdict very far in the future. Forget the statue. Something with a light touch like naming a hall or a field is a little less risky IMHO.

Brodie

January 19th, 2024 at 5:47 PM ^

Yes, when Jim is gone (be it next week, next year, or next decade) there needs to be a serious effort to de-Schembechlerize the program with Harbaugh in his place. Replace the Bo quotes with "who's got it better than us?" and "an enthusiasm unknown to mankind", rename the building Harbaugh Hall. I'm torn on the statue because I almost think it should be moved to the UMMA and recontextualized in a way that honors the victims, but tearing it down would suffice. 

This would also alter things so the only coaches with pieces of infrastructure named after them are ones who won national titles (Yost, Crisler, Kipke, Oosterbaan, Carr, Harbaugh) which is also what, say, Alabama does

NittanyFan

January 19th, 2024 at 4:39 PM ^

Disagree.  Great and morally good people ARE among us, and that combination should be celebrated.  It can inspire folks to higher aspirations.  And these sort of decisions (Hall of Fame inductions, naming things, building statues, etc) are all reversible.

Reversing a decision does require people and society to admit when they were wrong.  Which - yes - many of us are not very good at admitting that, and society as a whole seems to be getting worse at that.

SalvatoreQuattro

January 19th, 2024 at 5:49 PM ^

People pick and choose whose sins they choose to see and whose sins they choose not to see. That’s an universal trait of humans.

People will justify or diminish immoral conduct based upon their affection/animus towards the parties involved.  While doing so they will present themselves as morally beyond reproach. Narcissism is an innate trait of our species.

Your great and moral people also struggle(d) with serious moral issues. People want to accept the admirable part of a person while forgetting the ignominious portions of their character. Again, an universal trait of humans.

Our country hasn’t yet figured out how to handle its past nor for that matter has any other country.