For the fourth straight year, Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan Wolverines failed to defeat Ohio State. Will this speed up Harbaugh’s return to the NFL?
The Jim Harbaugh era at Michigan has epitomized one thing: Giving the fans hope and then crushing it.
When Harbaugh returned to his alma mater in 2015 to serve as head coach it gave the fans hope that Michigan would soon be returning to the national championship conversation.
While that did finally happen in 2018, there is one glaring blemish on Harbaugh’s Michigan resume: four straight games against Ohio State, and four straight losses.
Michigan’s losing streak in “The Game” continued on Saturday with a record-setting 62-39 loss (most points ever allowed by Michigan in a non-overtime game) in Columbus, stretching it to seven consecutive years, and four years under Harbaugh. The Wolverines had been the most dominant defensive team in college football all season, until Dwayne Haskins and the Buckeyes offense came forth and torched them with their best game of the year.
Once again, the Wolverines gave their fans sky-high expectations — especially of finally knocking off the despicable Buckeyes — and then crushed them. That reality has been as true in 2018 as ever.
The No. 1 item on the to-do list in Ann Arbor every single year is beating Ohio State at the end of the year, and if Harbaugh can’t accomplish that, then perhaps he should think long and hard about going back to the NFL. The possibility of Harbaugh making a return to the pros has circled around the rumor mill, and after four straight defeats to the Buckeyes, some Michigan fans might just be in favor of that.
It might sound a little harsh, as Harbaugh’s Michigan teams haven’t been bad by any means. It’s just that beating Ohio State is everything to this fan base.
Michigan has only beaten Ohio State twice since 2000. Harbaugh wasn’t just hired to get the Wolverines back to competing for Big Ten titles and national titles, but to also turn around a rivalry that has been largely one-sided for most of this century.
In four defeats to Ohio State under Harbaugh, all but one of them have been by double-digits, and two have been by 23 points or more. Michigan is eliminated from the College Football Playoff discussion and is again the butt of jokes from around the nation as they choked once again to their bitter rivals.
Considering that Harbaugh has now been in charge of the program for four years and has yet to even make a dent in rerouting the fortunes of this rivalry, it’s only a matter of time before Michigan fans get tired of waiting for something to happen, even if he is a “Michigan Man.”
Harbaugh is signed through the 2021 season and he’s not in danger of being fired despite the ongoing struggles vs. Ohio State. Michigan would have to pay him a $17.1 million buyout, according to USA Today. If Harbaugh left for another job before this season, he would have had to repay $2 million of his signing bonus according to Newsday. However, there is no language that says he would owe Michigan should he leave after Year 4.
Nothing is more important to the Wolverines than beating the Buckeyes. If Harbaugh can’t make that happen, he might as well return to NFL and chase down the Super Bowl ring he came oh-so-close to in 2012.