With Jim Harbaugh, Michigan can count on success
There have been so many breathless words wasted about the dysfunction at Michigan, so many brain cells burned coming up with theories about why the Big Ten was no longer a relevant force in college football.
But this stuff is pretty simple. Always has been and always will be.
For all the administrative failures, booster agendas, laments about how many players grow up in the Rust Belt these days as opposed to the Deep South, never, ever forget that college football is about one thing.
When you combine a great brand name with a great coach, everything else follows and nothing else matters. With one well-timed and perfectly orchestrated push for Jim Harbaugh, Michigan is back and so is the Big Ten.
No, Harbaugh hasn't won any games or recruits. He hasn't even had a press conference yet — his hire, though not official, is expected to be so by Tuesday — or awkwardly sung Hail to the Victors. But we know what's coming. We know because the history of college football tells us that the marriage of Jim Harbaugh and Michigan is too big to fail, just like it was obvious that Nick Saban would win championships at Alabama and Urban Meyer would have Ohio State humming in no time.
We spent so much energy this fall debating TCU and Baylor and worrying about what Arizona State or Mississippi State needed to do to get into the College Football Playoff.
But here we are, the first playoff games on the horizon, and a program that hasn't been in the conversation for anything meaningful since 2006 is the biggest story in the sport.
That's what Harbaugh-to-Michigan means because that's the essence of the sport. The rise and fall of the brand names is bigger than the games themselves, and now all we have to do is wait for Harbaugh to get Michigan to the party.
Because that's what is going to happen. He's too good, he's too determined, and the fundamental things that make Michigan Michigan still haven't changed.
You may have heard otherwise on that last point a few times this fall.
Former athletics director Dave Brandon sent some snarky e-mails to fans, and that was a big story for a minute. There were whispers of trustee chaos. Uncertainty about how long interim AD Jim Hackett will actually have the job. A new school president in Mark Schlissel who made some disparaging comments about the culture of athletics, then backtracked. Thus, the narrative formed: Michigan was no longer an elite job, doomed to football mediocrity for the next decade, if not forever.
It's a familiar ruse.
The same thing was said about Alabama before Nick Saban, about Notre Dame before Brian Kelly and about Florida State before Jimbo Fisher. All three played for national championships by their fourth season.
Who knows what the timeline will be for Harbaugh, but this is the life cycle of a college football power that has been down too long and finally got the coach it needed for a revival. This is not Florida hiring Jim McElwain and hoping it works out. This is the winningest program of all-time with one of the greatest brands in college sports hiring one of the 10 best coaches in all of football. Winter may be a little colder in Ann Arbor than anywhere in the SEC, but that sells, baby.
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Put Oregon in a little different category, but if the inaugural Playoff has taught us anything, this whole thing is about the coach and the brand. And now the Big Ten, for all its academic haughtiness and antiquated recruiting philosophies, has the right combination at the programs that matter — enough to challenge the SEC and the Pac 12.
Don't worry about what's going on at Purdue or Iowa or Rutgers. It's pointless. Stop studying recruiting maps or worrying about population trends. The only thing that has plagued the Big Ten is that its best programs have not been its best programs.
Michigan has been average for a long time. Ohio State went through a massive NCAA ordeal. The biggest scandal in the history of college sports landed on Penn State's doorstep. Nebraska, added in 2011, has made little impact on the conference.
If those four programs are great, the Big Ten is going to be great. And those four programs have every resource and reason to be great if they have the right coach.
Urban Meyer is already there at Ohio State. James Franklin has shown the potential to get there, particularly the way he's recruiting. Nebraska will be more of a mystery with Mike Riley, but firing a coach in Bo Pelini who never won fewer than nine games shows the institutional commitment to get there. And for Harbaugh, fixing Michigan will be nothing relative to what he already accomplished at Stanford.
Recruits are going to come. The culture is going to change. The wins will follow. And Harbaugh will prove once again that tradition eventually rises to its level in college football. Always does, always will.