Happy Harbaugh Day

To understand the Michigan fan experience about the Harbaugh hire, think about it this way: it's a lot like LeBron coming back to Cleveland for the Cavs fans. The state of the football program is in disarray, from a fan perspective we were HARBAUGH OR BUST, and we got Harbaugh (no, not THAT Harbaugh... Silly freep...).
 

 
Jim Harbaugh has a bit of a chore ahead of him. The program is pretty talent-bereft on the offensive side of the ball, and nowhere is that more evident than at the QB position. Harbaugh is a great recruiter (remember that Andrew Luck dude?) and a pretty good developer of QBs, but this doesn't get fixed in one offseason. The defense looks better, although they lose their best player, Jake Ryan, in the draft. Hopefully Jabrill Peppers is healthy for 2015.
 
My wife asked me why this Harbaugh guy was such a big deal, and I found myself oddly at a loss for words for a moment. So, why IS this Harbaugh guy such a big deal? First, he has a long history with the team, going back to when he was 10 years-old and his family moved to Ann Arbor so his dad could be Bo Schembechler's DBs coach. He lived in Ann Arbor for about 6 years, played some HS football at Pioneer, and pretty much idolized Bo (this is like mashed potatoes & gravy to Wolverines fans, we eat this stuff up). He was a good college QB, finishing 3rd in Heisman voting, but never took off in the NFL. Still, he had a 14 year career and then went on to coaching.
 
Harbaugh started out as an unpaid assistant at Western Kentucky while Jim was still playing in the pros, mainly scouting & recruiting high school players for his dad. After retiring from the NFL, Jim was a QB coach in Oakland when they last went to the Super Bowl, and then took the HC job at the University of San Diego, finishing 29-6 in 3 years there. He then took on a Stanford team from 1-11 the year before he got there to 12-1 in 4 years. Harbaugh moved onto the NFL, taking over a 49ers team that had been floundering for several years and had immediate success. The signs were there at the beginning of the 2014 season that relationship between Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers front office had soured, and they decided to part ways at the end of the season, citing "philosophical differences"...

I've got a good friend who's getting his doctorate in philosophy, and I want to ask him what these differences could be. Like, was 49ers CEO Jed York totally into Relativism and Harbaugh was all, "Dude, I can't coach for a guy who doesn't believe in Natural Law, I'm outie-5"?

...Anyway, Harbaugh has a) STRONG ties to the University of Michigan, b) is one of the 5 best coaches in all of football, and c) has great name recognition on top of already being a great recruiter. Saying Michigan knocked this one out of the park is like saying Giancarlo Stanton hits homeruns. They didn't knock this out, they crushed it. Obliterated it.
 

 
 Michigan fans are giddy all over. Players love this dude. He's intense to the point that he deserves his picture on this t shirt...

...which means it's not always a smooth ride, but he'll take you to the top.