The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Jim Harbaugh leaving Michigan to return to the NFL - who will go with him & who should replace him?

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt reacts to the news that Jim Harbaugh will be leaving Michigan and returning to the NFL to take the Head Coaching job with the LA Chargers. He reflects on Harbaugh’s time in Ann Arbor before discussing who should replace him as Head Coach and why the Wolverines need to act fast. Klatt also provides insight into which of Harbaugh’s assistant coaches will be going with Harbaugh to the Chargers and which will stay at Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You cannot argue with what this guy has done. And because of that, he will go down as a Michigan man, a Michigan legend, and in many cases will be considered the greatest coach in their history. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. I believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. It was an epic day of college football. It was one of those days where you fall in love with the sport all over again.

Hey, what's up, everybody? Emergency Edition of the Joel Class. last show, we told you as soon as we got any news that we would be out. And here we are, Jim Harbaugh, headed to the Los Angeles Chargers. As I've been kind of speculating, ever since they won the national championship, this is a good fit for Jim Harbaugh. This is a team that's ready to win in the National Football League. They've got a quarterback that's ready to win in the National Football League. This is a perfect position for him to go. He is one of the best, if not the best coach currently going in our sport in college. football. I know Kirby Smart fans would disagree, but I'll give you some context of why, you know, I will say that here in just a moment. Having said that, though, this leaves a massive vacancy in the college football world. The defending national champion needs a new coach. And now three of the four playoff teams are going to be, you know, working with brand new head coaches next year, which is pretty wild here.

All things in college football getting a little crazy. All right. So let's take this one thing at a time here. Let's take it first from Jim Harbaugh's standpoint. As I've told you ever since they won that game against Washington, this makes a lot of sense. Jim has done everything that he came to Michigan to do, and he is going to be remembered as a legend for doing it.

He came to return them to the, promise land and that's exactly what he did now for some maybe it took a little bit too long but he did it and so there's nothing left to prove at michigan now if you wanted to stay he could have stayed and been pretty comfortable and probably still been very successful at michigan but he's also still an incredible competitor and there is one area where he has not gotten it done and that is winning a super bowl at the next level in the national football league whether it was as a player or as a coach. Got close, obviously,

and that loss to his brother against the Ravens with the 49ers. But now he's headed back, and that's going to be his goal. And he's going to try to go and win a Super Bowl, obviously. And Charger fans should be incredibly excited. If you happen to be a Chargers fan, and you're watching this, I think Jim Harbaugh is one of the best coaches in the sport.

He does such a phenomenal job of building a fundamentally sound, tough competition-oriented football team. They're always a throwback team. They're always physical, and they are tough to beat. Every level, everywhere that he's ever been. And it's not going to be any different with the Chargers. That team is going to be a lot better. And I know it's a tough division, obviously, with Patrick Mahomes,

but I would be really surprised if the Chargers aren't one of the elite AFC teams maybe next year or certainly in the years to come. that's a roster of the trade of win, and this is a guy that just understands the sport. You watch his teams, even the coaches, by the way, there are guys that don't like Jim Harbaugh. I mean, that's obvious in the coaching ranks. And even the guys that don't like him watch his teams,

and they're like, man, they're really well coached. Man, they do everything really well. They play hard. They run to the football. They're physical. And at least for the last three years at Michigan, they had an incredible culture, and that's what he's going to bring to the Chargers. So that's that aspect. There's also an aspect of why deal with the NCAA, excuse me.

If I'm Harbaugh, there's no way I want to deal with the NCAA. Look at what's going on right now. They're getting a notice of infractions about a recruiting dead period. They're still going to be under investigation for the Conner Stallion's issues. And in his mind, he's like, why? He already had to serve six games of a suspension this last year. It was going to be more. I'm sure that the investigation is not going to,

it's not going to be nothing in terms of the sign stealing. And all that will come out later. And this is an opportunity for him to just leave and not have to deal with the NCAA. I wouldn't want to deal with the NCAA. They're getting a notice of allegations for recruiting dead period. Meanwhile, kids are pulling up to their national letter of intent signings and lambos. Come on. Like, what, again, what are we doing?

So he left and he went to the National Football League. Now the question becomes, who's staying and who's going? Okay. First and foremost, I want to be crystal clear about this. Michigan should hire Sharon Moore, period. He already had a job interview. That last three games of a job interview, he was the interim coach one time during the three game suspension to begin the year. It doesn't really count.

I mean, those are teams that they're going to beat anyways. He is the interim head coach as they go right down the gauntlet at Penn State, at Maryland, home against Ohio State. Like, are you kidding me? Guys want to know against Ohio State. this is post sign stealing and cheating, right? I mean, this is the biggest no-brainer of all time. He has shown himself to be a guy that everybody on the team, certainly the offensive linemen, but everybody on the team love.

And they played hard for him. And this is an easy fit moving forward, and they need to do it quickly. And that brings up their state law about the seven days. This job has to, quote, unquote, be post- for seven days. Now, this is obviously a rule, a law that is meant for jobs other than the head football coach at the university. This is meant for everything else so that, you know, there's employment opportunities and people understand where those employment opportunities

exist. That's not what this is. And so, Michigan does have a chance to apply for a waiver and circumvent the seven-day law and actually announce Sharon Moore as their head coach in quicker fashion, which I believe they should do. They should be applying for this if they haven't already, and they should be trying to announce Sharon Morris as their head coach as quickly as possible. Now, just so you know, the language of this law, and specifically the application to kind of circumvent it, goes like this. You can apply for a waiver of the posting requirement if legitimate business needs of the unit outweigh the university's intent to provide notice of employment opportunities. Well, this is a case study for that.

Obviously, the business of the unit, the University of Michigan football team, that business circumvents the universities need to let people know of the employment opportunity for their head coach. I mean, this is silly. We need to apply for the waiver as quickly as possible. and move forward because Sharon's the guy and the quicker that you can have a head coach in there, in particular a guy that all the kids in the locker room love, then you can move forward without all the chaos that we've seen at other schools with their coaching changes. Because one thing we know about college football in the modern era is that coaching changes are chaos.

All right. You don't want that chaos to enter your locker room so you need to do things to build the barriers around your program and protect it from the chaos that could ensue through a vacuum of information. You don't want that vacuum of information, so they need to apply for the waiver. They need to hire Sharon more and then move forward. Then it becomes a question of which of the assistants are going to stay with Sharon and which are going to go with Jim. And I'm sure that this has already worked out. Here's a guess.

Here's a thought, kind of my gut reaction as to how this is all going to work out. Jesse Mentor the defensive coordinator. I would be shocked if he's not the coordinator for the Chargers. Look at the success that Mike McDonald has had running the same defense as the coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens. That's one of if not the best defense in the National Football League. All right. Michigan was the best defense. And by the way, statistically one of the historically great defenses that we've ever seen,

15 and 0 national champions, Jesse cut his teeth in the NFL as a Ravens, assistant, kind of an analyst-style assistant with Mike McDonald, and he's always wanted to get back to the National Football League to test himself on the highest level. This is going to be his opportunity. I do believe that Jim takes Jesse Minter, and he's going to take him to the Chargers. Probably Jay Harbaugh as well. That would be an obvious one.

And then it gets more interesting. And I actually think other than those two, there's going to be a lot of guys that stay at Michigan and stay in the family. if you will. And here comes the most important one. Sharon Moore, if he was going to pound the table for one personnel move and really fight with Jim over who's going to stay and who's going to go, Sharon should fight for Ben Herbert, the strength and conditioning coach. I believe he's going to stay at Michigan, namely because you can impact the culture of the program to a much greater degree as a strength and conditioning coach. at the college level, then you can at the NFL level.

His impact is substantial with Michigan. In fact, most of the coaches and players will tell you that he's the reason why they're mentally tough. He's the reason why they're so physical at the line of scrimmage. I'm sure Jim will want to take him, but his impact at the NFL level will be mitigated by the fact that he's coaching pros. They don't care about culture. They care about paychecks, right? It's about talent there.

You don't, you're not going to run a 14. year vet through the strength and conditioning program to build culture, they'll look at you and laugh. So in my estimation, Ben Herbert fits better at Michigan in college. I think he's going to stay there, and that would be a huge win for Sharon Moore moving forward because that would be a great way to really keep the culture of the locker room intact during the transition. Ben Herbert would be a huge one. And outside of that, I think that most of those other guys will probably stay. All right, now let's just give a little bit of a context, a little bit of context to what Jim Harbaugh accomplished. The haters are always going to talk about the cheating.

Fine. That is, it is what it is. And you know what? It's hard to argue with it and fair enough. Now, having said that, it's hard to argue with his record. Okay. Michigan was not very good before he got there. Rich Rodriguez was awful at Michigan, good coach, bad at Michigan.

Brady Hoke was not very good at Michigan. In fact, if you look at it, his win total went down every year in the four years he was a head coach. Rodriguez's went up three to five to seven. Most games he ever won was seven games. Brady Hoke comes in, he did, win 11 games, and then eight, seven, and five. I mean, that's it. One double-digit win season between those guys, and they only finished ranked at the end of the year twice during those years.

Horrid years for the all-time winning his program in the history of the sport. So they bring in the favorite son, Jim Harbaugh. He immediately makes them more relevant. He immediately starts winning double-digit games. He immediately puts them into a position where his second year and then almost every single subsequent year, they were ranked inside the, top 10 at some point during the course of the season outside of the COVID year.

All right. So they were just incredibly relevant. Now, he began to draw the ire of some fans because he couldn't get over the hump of Ohio State or even you could make an argument, kind of road tests when he was an underdog, bowl games, those types of situations. And then all of a sudden, post-COVID, things change. He gets his brother's defense. McDonald comes in. Jesse Mentor comes in. The offense really solidifies itself around Sharon more as the offensive line coach,

first tight ends coach, then offensive line coach, then play caller. And here we are. They're 12 and 2, 13 and 1, 15, and 0. They're back to back to back, big 10 champions. They've beat Ohio State three straight times. They just won the Rose Bowl, and they are the national champions. I mean, they basically end, we'll see moving forward, but they stop the string of success that the SEC has had. Remember, he's doing this in an era in which we all thought that the SEC would just win every single championship.

And they have, for the most part, and now all of a sudden Michigan wins the national championship. You cannot argue with what this guy has done. And because of that, he will go down as a Michigan man, a Michigan legend, and in many cases will be considered the greatest coach in their history. I know they've got Fielding Yost. I get it. They get both Schembeckler. Schembeckler never won a national championship. And Lloyd Carr, yes, he won a national championship.

But Jim came back to resurrect them back to what they were. And then he went to a place that many believed was an impossible place to get. 15 and O in modern college football and winning the national championship, beating Alabama in the Rose Bowl, the guy is going to go down as a legend. He's going to go down as an absolute legend. So that'll have it. That'll do it. I will be back with any more information and we'll break this down a little bit further

when I record on Sunday. So that's Monday's podcast. But yeah, big news. Jim Harbaugh to the Chargers. Kind of has, as we've expected. I told you that that was going to happen. That's what has happened now. I told you Kaylon DeBore was going to be the coach at Alabama.

That's what has happened. I think Jesse Mentor is going to go to the Chargers. I think Sharon Moore is going to be your Michigan head football coach, and he needs to be the head football coach as soon as possible. Remember to follow the show. Subscribe to the show wherever you're listening to this podcast. Make sure to subscribe on YouTube as well and leave a comment, and I'll jump down there and jump in those comments.

And then follow us on social media, wherever you like to social media, at Joel Clatsio. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday with more, Joel Clatio.