Three Compelling Reasons for Jim Harbaugh to Make the Move to the NFL
Not only did Jim Harbaugh’s name appear around this time of year when NFL positions became available, but he was also winning the Big Ten and making the College Football Playoffs. It was justified at times, but not always. But after interviewing with the Atlanta Falcons and Los Angeles Chargers, he’s clearly become a wanted man, at least somewhat. Though it’s clear that Harbaugh isn’t making this decision alone—he needs to get a job offer in order to depart Ann Arbor—it seems reasonable for him to try his hand at winning a Super Bowl once more following his championship run. These are the top three reasons Harbaugh, if given the opportunity, ought to become pro.
The window is going to close.
When it comes to selecting intelligent, promising young head coaches, the NFL is becoming younger and younger. Harbaugh was sixty a few days before Christmas, yet there are eight head coaches who are 40 or younger. There would only be four coaches in the league older than Harbaugh if he were hired today, and his brother John, who is 61 years old, is one of them. The others are Andy Reid, Mike McCarthy, and Todd Bowles. Jim is running out of time if he truly wants to try his hand at the game again and possibly win a Super Bowl. Simply put, teams aren’t “starting over” with 60-year-old coaches.
Its goal was achieved in Michigan.
All of the things Harbaugh came back to Michigan to achieve, he’s completed in the last three years. He had made it to the College Football Playoffs three times in a row, destroyed Ohio State three times—possibly shattering their entire program in the process—won the Big Ten title back-to-back, and as of January 8, he had won a national championship. There’s nothing left for Harbaugh to do at Michigan except soap, rinse, and repeat. It would be immensely satisfying to keep up the winning and humiliate Ohio State even more, but in terms of trying new things and getting to new heights, Harbaugh is unable to lead the Wolverines much higher. It’s hard to imagine a more ideal way to cap out a tenure than going 15-0 while shutting down Michigan State, defeating Ohio State once more, taking home another Big Ten Championship, upsetting Alabama in overtime in the Rose Bowl, forcing Nick Saban into retirement, and defeating Washington by 21 points in the championship game.
There will be numerous adjustments.
Big changes are coming, whether it’s the College Football Playoff’s expansion, which threatens the relevance of major rivalries, the transfer portal’s seedy free agency world, the NCAA’s possible punishments for Harbaugh’s rule breaking (egregious or not), the ever-growing significance of NIL, which Michigan still doesn’t seem to be fully committed to, the prospect of losing excellent assistant coaches to the next level, or the players who left Michigan for the next level after this past season. Between seasons, any one of those issues is a lot to handle, and Harbaugh is essentially handling them all at once. He just won everything, he’s growing older, and he’s got to deal with things that coaches just didn’t have to five years before. Now is the ideal moment to set out into the twilight.
