Jim Harbaugh Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh walks off the field after the Wolverines lost, 34-11, to Georgia at the Orange Bowl at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on Friday, Dec. 31, 2021.

Last year was, inarguably the best Michigan football season in decades as the Wolverines beat Ohio State, won the Big Ten, and made the College Football Playoff. However, it’s been nothing but drama ever since as head coach Jim Harbaugh tried to parlay that success into a return to the NFL that never materialized. After once claiming that he’d work at Michigan for free, he then reworked his contract for more money and said that his dalliances with the NFL were over (even though his buyout says otherwise). However, that was after losing assistant coaches to other programs and seeing much of the goodwill from 2021 evaporate beneath him.

That’s not to say that Michigan can’t find similar success in 2022, but they’ve certainly stacked the deck against themselves and Harbaugh only has himself to blame on that front.

ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel was a guest on The Adam Schein Podcast on Wednesday and he was asked about what happened with Harbaugh, what the truth was about his interest in the NFL, and why it blew up in his face.

“I think he felt like it was the time to leave,” said Thamel. “That’s what his actions dictated. The actions and the words dictated very different things.

“Jim Harbaugh, if you go back to who he was as a player at Michigan, a player in the NFL, he is as competitive a person who has come through football that we’ve seen. Most college coaches in their rational mind wouldn’t risk what he did, going to Minnesota to interview. Everybody thought he had the job cause he thought he had the job. A lot of people at Michigan thought it. He didn’t have the job. He does not have a good reputation in NFL circles because it ended so poorly in San Francisco. Those owners talk… Billionaires talk.

“He won nearly 70% of his games as an NFL coach. He has the fourth-highest winning percentage in NFL history. Now it was just a four-year sample size, but look, you go through NFL rosters and you go through the history of the NFL, people tend to overlook flaws if you can win… So I think it says a little something about Jim Harbaugh and how it ended in San Francisco, and just how he interacted with management and ownership, that he has not found another opportunity in the NFL.

“The thing that’s puzzling to me about Harbaugh is that he was so…he went after, and didn’t hide it, I’ll give him credit for that. It wasn’t the dark of night, he was very open about it. And then he was just very blunt in saying he never wants to leave. Well, your actions just told me that you really want to leave to the point where you risk angering your bosses and alienating your fanbase. Quite frankly I think it hurt him with some staffing stuff and they didn’t do a great job retaining some of the players who could have come back for super-senior years. He was a little bit checked out there. And they lost some very key staff.”

As far as how Harbaugh’s overtures to the NFL affected all of the goodwill earned this past season by Michigan, Thamel thinks it may have seriously damaged much of the positive momentum.

“They did a poor job at Michigan, in my opinion, maximizing one of the best seasons they’ve had in the last generation,” said Thamel. “There was so much good juju around that program. So many good vibes, even after the way they got throttled in the playoffs. This was as good as it got and they never carried it over. That joyride ended immediately and has not carried over into this offseason.

“All of a sudden there’s a bunch more questions as opposed to really putting the throttle down and hammering the moment.”

A lot of people are going to be watching Harbaugh and Michigan next season to see if they can duplicate the success they found last year. And you better believe that Ohio State will be paying very close attention.

[The Adam Schein Podcast]

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Editorial Strategy Director for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.