Harbaugh left Michigan to supercharge LA
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The Los Angeles Chargers’ logo is a bolt of lightning. So, too, is Jim Harbaugh.
The man can electrify a team, energize a fan base, jolt a city. For close to a decade, he supplied the Wolverines with juice, helping them surge to the top of the college ranks. Then, when they got there, he pulled the plug.
“I have a love of Michigan,” he said Thursday at his reintroduction to pro football. “But (I also) love the NFL.”
Harbaugh told a rapt audience Thursday he was focused on the task ahead: restoring a sagging franchise and winning multiple Super Bowls in a division long ruled by the Kansas City Chiefs.
He projected an enthusiasm unknown to mankind 2,300 miles away from the Big House he abandoned last week.
“Only have so many sands left in the hourglass and I want another shot,” Harbaugh said. “I want another shot to be simply known as ‘World Champions.’ The Lombardi Trophy, that’s my mission.”
He seized the chance one month removed from his 60th birthday and 16 days after he reached the summit of college football. Harbaugh’s father, Jack, told the Free Press his son yearned for his next quest.
“That’s what he thrives on. That’s what he lives for. That’s what he responds to,” he said on the night of Harbaugh’s last and most satisfying victory at Michigan.
While the getting was good
It remains a mystery why Harbaugh wasn’t intrigued enough by the challenge that remained for him in Ann Arbor.
There, he could have remained big man on campus and steered his championship program into a new age.
There, he could have confronted all the obstacles: a tougher schedule, a more formidable Big Ten, two active NCAA investigations and all of Michigan’s self-imposed restraints that threatened to impede the replenishment of a roster diminished by departures for the NFL.
Yet Harbaugh got out when the getting was good, leaving his successor, Sherrone Moore, to deal with it all.
Harbaugh insisted Thursday that the Wolverines remain “in a great place.” But Michigan fans are left to wonder how good it really is if he wanted to leave so soon after he achieved glory. In the warm afterglow of a national title, they are faced with the chill brought on by Harbaugh’s departure and what could come next.
For so long, they naively believed Harbaugh’s sentimental attachment to his alma mater and his fond memories of his Ann Arbor upbringing would keep him at the Big House until he left feet first. Harbaugh helped foster that hope by telling the media he would remain as long as U-M’s leadership wanted him.
Yet as soon as he revitalized the program and restored his career, Harbaugh no longer acted like a loyal alumnus whose sole calling was to serve his beloved program. His personal ambitions led him to another M – Minnesota, where he interviewed with the Vikings on National Signing Day two years ago. No offer came, but Harbaugh’s wandering eye was exposed. It seemed only a matter of time.
The Chargers stepped to the fore, signing him to a five-year deal that reportedly pays $16 million annually. It’s the going rate for the Harbaugh generator, which will try to jump-start a team that flatlined, finishing last in the AFC West at 5-12 this past season.
“The whole mindset of attacking each day, with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind, I know it kind of sounds cliché,” said John Spanos, the team’s president of football operations. “But he lives it. He breathes it. And it’s real. It rubs off on people.”
Would Capt. Comeback come back?
Harbaugh’s obsessive personality made him a textbook turnaround artist. He lifted Stanford from the bottom of the then–Pac-10 into the top five of the polls. He restored the San Francisco 49ers. At Michigan, he twice pulled his alma mater’s sagging program out of the abyss.
Whether he can work his magic again near Tinseltown is the question. But as Harbaugh once said about winning the Big Ten: “We’re going to do it or die trying.”
Some wondered if this day would ever come. Harbaugh had a .695 winning percentage in the pros and one of the best résumés of any coach in the game. But he bore the scars from a bitter divorce with the 49ers that pushed him out of a league where his remarkable success on the sideline was overshadowed by the unrest he reportedly caused with superiors.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Chargers owner Dean Spanos cautioned.
“I’ve talked to some of those people and I’ve never heard anything to maybe what you’ve read in the papers. It’s all been respectful. He was well-respected by those people.”
Even they couldn’t deny he was a winner. It’s why betting against him has always been a losing proposition.
After Michigan went up in flames in 2020, he and the Wolverines soared from the ashes like a phoenix.
They transformed into perennial contenders during a thrilling three-year run, highlighted by 40 victories in 43 games, three conference titles and a national championship that provided Harbaugh with the crowning achievement many believed was preordained when he came back to coach in December 2014.
But it was nearly derailed by the turmoil he invited. This past season, Harbaugh was suspended twice after his program became ensnared in two separate NCAA investigations: one on impermissible recruiting and coaching, the other tied to cheating. The controversies cast a pall over the Wolverines even in their triumph. It shadows them now.
But three time zones away, Harbaugh flashed a toothy grin and surveyed the dark auditorium. Captain Comeback. “Happy and grateful,” he said.
The energy in his voice was palpable. The room where he spoke lit up. The Chargers had their lightning bolt, ready to shock and awe.