The Big Ten Will Rue, Celebrate the Day Michigan Hired Jim Harbaugh

Jim Harbaugh is now officially the new head football coach at Michigan, and the rest of the Big Ten had best start worrying…and cheering.

For most of the football coaches in the Big Ten, this has not been a very gracious holiday season. To date, they are 2-4 in bowl game appearances, they lost their lightning rod, one Bo Pelini, and now they’ve got some serious thunder to deal with, one Jim Harbaugh.

With Harbaugh being introduced as the new head coach at Michigan, the game in the Big Ten just changed, and that conference will rue (and celebrate) the day that the jaw-clenching ruffian ever took over on the sidelines at Ann Arbor.

Michigan Wolverines

Mike Riley is probably looking back towards Corvallis thinking, “Oh dear, I’ve just stepped in it, haven’t I”, and I’d be willing to bet that every “Harbaugh doesn’t want to leave the NFL” rumor was started in hopeful prayer by a coach in the Big Ten.

And Pete Carroll is doing a Snoopy-like happy dance.

Hiring Harbaugh doesn’t just make Michigan better, it makes them dangerous…immediately. No, Harbaugh doesn’t have the greatest amount of talent awaiting him, and although some recruits flipped and de-committed from Michigan in weeks following Brady Hoke’s dismissal, you can bet that many of them, plus more, will come back into the maize and blue fold.

Jim Harbaugh brings instant credibility, and a brand new attitude to Michigan football. Although he may be a “Michigan Man”, he’s absolutely nothing like Hoke.

The very things that made Harbaugh a liability in an NFL locker room are the qualities that made him great at Stanford, and will serve him even better at Michigan. His temperament may not be suited for professional prima donnas and millionaires, but 18 to 21-year-olds respond to his passionate antics, and love playing for him.

Every talking head with teeth and a tongue has gone over Harbaugh’s past success, reviving a dead-in-the-water program at Stanford and turning them into a Pac-12 and national contender, and then taking over a San Francisco 49ers franchise in the NFL that had been aimlessly adrift for nearly a decade under the likes of Dennis Erickson, Mike Nolan and Mike Singletary, and making them into Super Bowl contenders.

But the job at Michigan is something different, and something he may excel at beyond expectations even. For, even if he had failed at his previous two stops, there is no question Harbaugh would be a success at Michigan.

You can forget about everything Jim Harbaugh has done in the past, because this job is not only an even bigger reclamation project than the past two, it also means something personal and dear to Harbaugh having played his college ball as a Wolverine.

Nobody expected Stanford to win, so that was just a nice surprise. Nobody cared about the 49ers anymore, they hadn’t been relevant in the NFL since the days of George Seifert. Bringing them back to prominence seemed just a matter of time in the parity-filled NFL.

But Michigan…that’s a program that people expect to win. When Michigan football matters, it’s good for college football. And nobody wants Michigan football to matter more than Harbaugh.

And every other coach in the Big Ten had best start preparing for the storm, because Harbaugh won’t take any prisoners and he’ll take every game personally.

When Urban Meyer joined the Big Ten as head coach of Ohio State in 2012, his said he wanted to build an SEC-like program in Columbus, putting together a mixture of speed and power on both sides of the ball, topped with tremendous defensive play.

Harbaugh may not use those exact words, since he’s never coached in the SEC, but rest assured, his plan will be eerily similar, especially if you look at what he put together over at Stanford. A powerful running game, anchored by a machine of an offensive line. An intimidating defense, with the ability to play on the other side of the line of scrimmage and no fear of man-to-man coverage. And a smart, heady quarterback who plays with NFL bravado.

Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler are looking down from heaven and salivating over what Michigan-Ohio State will become with Harbaugh and Meyer at the helm.

Big Ten football has taken a downward turn over the past few seasons, and it looked to be getting worse. But the conference is no longer just Ohio State vs. Wisconsin and Michigan State. The Wolverines are going to be in that mix, and in turn, they will make all the teams around them better.

Harbaugh is going to bring the Saban effect to the Big Ten, raising not only the level of play at Michigan, but causing other teams in the conference to either hold serve and up their games, or be forgotten.

Imagine the mixed emotions other Big Ten coaches must be feeling. The conference now has a guy (other than Urban Meyer) who will help elevate the level of play in their conference, and add even more competition for the SEC….but they have to play against this guy and his team too.

Recruiting in the midwest just got a lot tougher too. Harbaugh will do what he did at Stanford and not only try to dominate recruiting in the state of Michigan, but in every outlying state as well. Even Notre Dame is going to feel some ripple effects from this hire.

Few times does a coach get hired do I look at it and think that it’s a game-changer. Usually I’ll categorize it as a good fit, a quick-fix solution, or just plain dumb (ie; John L. Smith at Arkansas).

But in this case there is no overstating how huge this will be for Michigan football, or for the Big Ten.

The Big Ten will rue the day Harbaugh set foot in the conference, because he’s going to make their jobs that much more difficult. But they’ll also celebrate it, because now the Big Ten can officially say they are on the way back up again.

And watch out, Appalachian State…Jim Harbaugh is gunning for you.

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