Please shelve the Jim Harbaugh leaving Michigan hot takes

Despite a down year at Michigan, Jim Harbaugh is not going to be leaving the program for greener pastures.

After finishing the first two seasons of the Jim Harbaugh era ranked inside of the Top 15, Michigan is in danger of finishing the third unranked. Whenever this happens in college football, regardless of the coach, the conversation about change always happens. With Harbaugh, the talk is all about which NFL team he’ll be leaving Ann Arbor to coach in 2018.

I’ll save you the time of clicking through slideshows; Indianapolis, Chicago, Houston, and Tampa Bay are the places you’ll hear Harbaugh rumored to leave Michigan for. He’ll be coaching none of them — he’s not going anywhere.

You fire a Hoke or Rodriguez to get to a Harbaugh, not the other way around.

The idea that Harbaugh will leave Michigan after one so-so season is insane, capital-I. Bailing at the first sign of trouble is not Harbaugh’s style. This is a guy who lives to rebuild programs, and that includes his own.

Harbaugh has zero incentive to leave Michigan and is years — perhaps close to a decade — away from being in a position where he’ll be pushed out. Unless the Wolverines fall off a cliff in the near future (they won’t), Michigan will not be putting pressure on his job. There’s insane job security for Harbaugh at Michigan that people too quick to link him to the Bears or Colts job gloss over. He is the closest thing to Lloyd Carr the school has seen since the latter left in 2007.

Some might point to the quick turnover from Rich Rodriguez to Brady Hoke to Harbaugh as evidence that Michigan isn’t going to wait for things to get better. All due respect to Hoke and Rodriguez, but neither have the clout or bravado that Harbaugh boasts, nor the proven track record to borrow time. You fire a Hoke or Rodriguez to get to a Harbaugh, not the other way around.

The rumors will pop up, but they’re false flags.  Harbaugh has so much unfinished business at Michigan that there’s no time to entertain a job elsewhere. There’s no one better for the job, and Harbaugh won’t find one that affords such potential riches as his current gig.

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Any talk of Harbaugh’s time being over at Michigan will revolve around his wanting to coach in the NFL again. That’s not something he’s expressed at all, and for good reason. He exists on an Urban Meyer/Nick Saban level where as long as things don’t go totally off the rails will have a job as long as he wants it.

Maybe he goes back to the NFL eventually but it’s not going to be anytime soon. There aren’t enough Andrew Luck’s (and certainly no Mitchell Trubisky’s) that will change that.