Michigan suffered another demoralizing loss yesterday, a pummeling in Madison that grabbed the attention of the college football universe. Speculation surrounding Jim Harbaugh’s lack of job security has run rampant for a few years now, and with things looking bleak for the Wolverines, that speculation figures to only ramp up over the weeks and months to come.
I like Jim Harbaugh. He likes milk. I like milk. We both probably enjoy some of the other same things, but that’s what I’ve got for now. I want him to succeed. I’m just not sure Michigan’s the place to do it.
Harbaugh, I think we can agree, did well at Stanford. He took a team that had been scuffling for about a decade and transformed them into a dominant force over just four years. He left the program in a great place, and he did it with one of the most famously cerebral quarterbacks in the game: Andrew Luck.
Now, I don’t want to criticize Michigan. It’s a fine school. And I certainly don’t want to criticize those who have played quarterback there under Harbaugh. The standard of Andrew Luck is hard to match. But I have to notice that quarterbacks of Andrew Luck’s intellectual capability aren’t attending the Michigan’s of the world. They’re going to the Stanford’s. Which is why if Jim Harbaugh does see his tenure at Michigan end come December, Columbia should come calling.
Columbia University is one of the few schools that outranks Stanford on those U.S. News and World Report rankings (note to self: we should start ranking the colleges at The Barking Crow, because I don’t have any idea what the U.S. News and World Report is but they seem to have a lot of sway just because they go to the trouble of ranking schools). It’s a great school, located on the upper end of Manhattan. People want to go there. People as smart as Andrew Luck want to go there.
It gets better, though. Having stayed near there for the last two NIT’s and having visited Michigan once for a game back in 2013, I can confirm that there are similarities between the two that might make it a comfortable transition for Harbaugh and his family. For example, there are sidewalks at both, and students at both seem to think they’re attending an Ivy League institution.
Columbia football made a brief splash in 2017, dropping a late-season contest with Harvard to narrowly miss a share of the Ivy League crown. It was noteworthy (FiveThirtyEight even did a little piece on the Lions), but partially because Columbia hasn’t been good in a long time. They’ve only won the Ivy League once, way back in 1961, when their players were presumably a little souped up from the Manhattan Project (editor’s note: NIT Stu has only the vaguest notion of what the Manhattan Project is, so we didn’t bother attempting to clear this up). Back in the 80’s, they went about five years without winning a game, losing 44 and tying three during the stretch. A hire like Harbaugh would reinvigorate the program, and it might just reinvigorate Harbaugh himself. There have been accusations that Ivy League schools don’t take football seriously. Want to change that culture? Install a man who takes football as seriously as people on SEC message boards (albeit in a more productive manner). Want to put your program on the map in a big way? Get a guy capable of developing one great, brainy NFL quarterback. Want to bring out Jim Harbaugh’s competitive juices? Get him into a city with some of the most impressive traffic cops in the world.
Also, let’s not act like Jim Harbaugh wouldn’t blow Dartmouth and Princeton and Yale out of the water when it comes to recruiting. Imagine you’re a nerdy high school kid who happens to be very athletic. Are you going to want to go play football for the man who says he’ll make you a man, or the dean of science at Yale who I assume coaches football on the side?
The question is not whether Jim Harbaugh would be the perfect fit at Columbia. The question is whether Jim Harbaugh and Columbia will both recognize this.
