Now that Jim Harbaugh is reportedly doing the unexpected and uprooting from California and heading to Michigan, the question becomes how long he’ll be the Michigan coach?
Harbaugh hasn’t stayed in any one place for very long as a head coach. He spent two years with the Raiders, three at the University of San Diego, and four at Stanford. Now, it will be four and out at San Francisco.
Harbaugh has a reputation for wearing out his welcome and/or burning out within four years. So will it happen in Michigan, where he’ll have to deal with plenty of non-football considerations again, like recruiting and dealing with boosters and administration?
That’ll be the biggest question over the next four years. It’s widely believed that Harbaugh will do extremely well at Michigan; he’s done extremely well everywhere he has been. Maybe he’ll find a way to stay longer at his alma mater than he has elsewhere.
Or maybe the attraction of chasing a Lombardi Trophy eventually will bring him back to the NFL, where his brother (John) and his nemesis (Pete Carroll) have won the last two of them.
Either way, few believe Harbaugh will come close to spending the 20 years in Ann Arbor that Bo Schembechler did. Michigan fans who suffered though the Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke experiments probably won’t mind if it’s only a handful of great seasons.
