He’s been successful everywhere he’s been. He knows how to get it done. I thought it was a great hire for them. – Kyle Whittingham on Jim Harbaugh
SALT LAKE CITY — Although there’s a lot of external hype surrounding Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan debut, the coach insists that isn’t the case within the program as the Wolverines prepare for Thursday’s season opener at Utah.
“Our mindset is that we win as a team,” Harbaugh said in this week’s Big Ten coaches teleconference. “And there’s nobody above the team — no coach, no player — just everybody does a little and it adds up to a lot. That’s our mindset.”
Harbaugh, who reportedly will have a camera on him throughout the national broadcast of the game on Fox Sports 1, is taking a business-like approach into his first season at the helm of his alma mater. He “submarined” his team during fall camp by limiting media availability.
“It was good for us,” Harbaugh explained. “We got a lot of work done.”
Details, though, didn’t really follow the assessment. The intense, khaki-pants-wearing coach wound up concluding his own media availability Tuesday morning by informing the moderator that he had a meeting to attend.
Before that, Harbaugh was asked why his depth chart this week failed to reveal a starting quarterback. Junior Shane Morris and senior Jake Rudock, an Iowa transfer, share the top spot.
“We know who is going to start. We know who’s going to go in second, or who’s going to go in next,” Harbaugh explained. “I want them both to prepare like they’re going to be the starter. I don’t know how to make it any more clear than that.”
However, Harbaugh did note that the players know. If the gamesmanship of not making it public prior to the game is any sort of disadvantage for the Utes’ preparation, he considers that another positive or by-product of the decision to not name a starter.
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham understands, adding that everyone has their different methods.
“I think he’s probably going about it the right way from his perspective and his standpoint as far as not tipping his hand,” Whittingham said.
Harbaugh took the Michigan job after successful college stints with San Diego and Stanford as well as the NFL's San Francisco 49ers.
“He’ll do a great job. He’s a heck of a coach. He’s a proven commodity,” Whittingham said. “He’s been successful everywhere he’s been. He knows how to get it done. I thought it was a great hire for them.”
When Harbaugh was introduced as Michigan’s new head coach in December he dismissed any notion that college football’s winningest program (915 victories) was in need of a turnaround — even if the Wolverines are coming off a 5-7 season, their third losing campaign in seven years.
"There are no turnarounds at Michigan," Harbaugh said. "This is greatness."
Harbaugh showered a lot of praise on the institution that day.
"Top to bottom, Michigan is about excellence, is about greatness, and you have my pledge that I will carry forward the tradition of excellence of the University of Michigan football program," he said.
Harbaugh reportedly signed a seven-year, $35 million contract that included a $2 million signing bonus to oversee the program.
"Throughout my life, I have dreamed of coaching at the University of Michigan," he said. "Now I have the honor to live it."
In gearing up for the challenge of being Harbaugh’s first opponent, Whittingham and the Utah coaching staff have covered a lot of ground. He said they’ve studied as many as seven different places where Harbaugh and his Michigan assistants have worked in recent years to form a best-guess scenario.
"That’s the best you can hope for anyway because you never know. Even when you have a returning staff, there are still changes that can be made in the offseason and different schematics. When you have a new staff, anything is in the realm of possibility,” Whittingham said. “We feel like we have a general idea of what to expect. You try to expose your players to virtually everything you think they might see during fall camp and build a game plan that will be able to accommodate all of the possibilities.”
The key, he continued, is in-game adjustments after the second or third series.
“You can’t wait until halftime,” Whittingham said. “You have to adjust in-game on the sidelines and get those adjustments down so you can make corrections and get people in the right places.”
Even so, the Utes have a pretty good idea of what to prepare for against Michigan.
“Coach Harbaugh knows what he wants to do. He’s done it for a lot of years and done it very well,” Whittingham said. “We don’t expect a lot of deviation from that.”
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Successful stops
How new Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh has fared as a head coach:
College Years Record
San Diego 2004-06 29-6
Stanford 2007-10 29-21
NFL Years Record
San Francisco 2011-14 44-19-1
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