(USA TODAY Sports)
According to reports, Michigan wants to make San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh the highest paid coach in college football. The offer according to the NFL Network would see Harbaugh paid $8 million per year for six years. It’s an offer that makes all the sense for the university.
Michigan is broken and fractured on and off the field. There’s likely only one person who could right the ship by simply being present. Harbaugh is the answer for Michigan, and the Wolverines are throwing everything they have at him.
The problem is that money can only carry you so far with a person like Harbaugh. Michigan is asking him to step into an athletic department that is in chaos, led by an interim athletic director, and a university president who has said out loud that he is still learning about being at a big school with a big athletic department. Not to mention the last two guys to have this job didn’t leave on great terms.
College is not the NFL. It’s rife with NCAA rules, regulations, and recruiting. There’s a lot more than football at play should Harbaugh head to Ann Arbor.
There also isn’t a Super Bowl.
(USA TODAY Sports)
Every NFL team that fires its coach this season will make a run at Harbaugh. They, like Michigan, would be stupid not to. They, unlike Michigan, afford the coach an opportunity to reach the pinnacle of football. In his first three seasons in the NFL, Harbaugh went to three consecutive NFC Championship games, and made one appearance in a Super Bowl.
Harbaugh won’t be back to the NFC Championship this year. And his tenure with San Francisco seems destined to come to a close after Week 17. As luck would have it, that other NFL team in the Bay Area has a job opening up and has a bright, young quarterback who could use an offensive genius.
Harbaugh knows the Oakland Raiders. He was the quarterbacks coach for the Raiders in 2002 and 2003. You might remember the last time Oakland reached a Super Bowl was in 2003.
Someone wired like Harbaugh doesn’t easily walk away after coming so close not once but four times. Someone like Harbaugh also doesn’t leave the west coast, where his family has been for the past 12 years, and thrust them into anything less than an ideal situation.
The money at Michigan is great, but it isn’t likely Harbaugh’s motivation. He could get money just about anywhere. A Super Bowl is far more precious.
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