College Football Bowls 2016: 10 best big game head coaches
By John Buhler
One would think that Michigan Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh would be higher up on this list of big game college football head coaches than sixth, but here we are. Harbaugh is a dynamic personality and one of the few head coaches that can find success both at the collegiate and professional level.
As a college head coach at San Diego, Stanford and now Michigan, Harbaugh has gone 78-32 and 49-20 in conference play. He has two division titles and two conference championships in college football. However, he is only 2-1 in bowl games. Harbaugh tends to leave jobs before coaching in his former program’s big game.
In the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers, Harbaugh went 44-19-1 in four seasons. He led the 49ers to the NFC Playoffs three times, going 5-3 in the postseason. All three of his 49ers playoff teams made it to the NFC Championship. Only once did he win the NFC Championship, over the Atlanta Falcons in 2012. He would then proceed to lose the Super Bowl to his older brother John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens.
Overall, we think of Harbaugh as being an elite head coach because he is. However, we tend to inflate his regular season successes more than his postseason inconsistencies. Harbaugh is the best head coach that has never won it all. He won’t win it all in the Orange Bowl against the Florida State Seminoles. The future is still blinding bright for Harbaugh as a head coach, college or pro.