Jim Harbaugh and Michigan football have so much to do, before even getting to Alabama
Jim Harbaugh had an announcement to make as he and his players basked in the afterglow of their third straight Big Ten title early Sunday morning.
“The team,” the Michigan football coach said, “will have the week off.”
The forthcoming respite was seen as a reward for the Wolverines’ hard work during a fall when they went undefeated and positioned themselves to complete their mission of winning a national title.
But there were also practical reasons behind the granted reprieve. With Michigan about to enter the vortex of final exams and the most frenetic period of the recruiting calendar, the program needed to temporarily shift its attention away from its top priority: A Jan. 1 date with Alabama in the College Football Playoff Rose Bowl semifinal.
This is the confounding reality faced by Harbaugh and his staff. As they prepare for what may be the most consequential game of his 9-year tenure, they also must build their team for the future during a frantic two-week sprint.
“It is quite demanding,” former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops told the Free Press this week. “And it’s all magnified right now.”
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Stoops delivered that commentary as a sympathetic observer on the outside. He left the college scene in the nick of time. He coached his final game 11 months before the advent of the December early signing period, which started in 2017 and instantaneously changed the sport. He also avoided the October 2018 launch of the transfer portal, which spurred another tectonic movement that reverberated coast to coast, from one campus to another.
“It’s all just much more intense and hectic than it used to be,” he said.
Harbaugh could probably attest to that.
In recent days, he and several assistants spent time jetting all over the country to solidify their 2024 class before the three-day signing period begins Dec. 20.
They traveled to Idaho to visit prized wide receiver prospect Gatlin Bair.
They dropped in to see four-star offensive lineman Blake Frazier, a commitment from Austin, Texas.
They made a short jaunt to Belleville, where they met up with Jeremiah Beasley, a linebacker who pledged to join the Wolverines in June.
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The tour unfolded as the 30-day transfer portal window opened this past Monday, kickstarting a frenzy of player movement and roster upheaval across the Football Bowl Subdivision.
“What’s going on right now is everybody’s getting pulled in all different kinds of directions,” said Todd Berry, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association.
It has added more chaos to a sport turned upside down by realignment, de facto college free agency and the rapid rise of the name, image and likeness marketplace.
Berry’s constituency has been left to juggle both the present and future of the programs they lead.
“I think the most precious thing for a coach right now is 10 free minutes,” Berry said. “This is an impossible, impossible task.”
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Yet it could become even more difficult next year, when the CFP expands to 12 teams and its opening round begins the third weekend of December. There is talk of moving the early signing period to November, to avoid a potential logjam where some of the landmark events on the college football calendar are jammed together in a condensed time frame.
"The fact that we haven't resolved this already, shame on us," Berry said.
It, of course, wasn’t always this way.
Not long ago, there was no portal and the only signing date was set in February. Stoops remembers those good old days. In 2015, he took Oklahoma on its maiden voyage to the CFP and had the luxury of not grappling with the current challenges coaches now face.
But Stoops still remembers feeling crunched for time back then as he aimed to strike the right balance between satisfying his team’s immediate needs and ensuring the program’s long-term welfare.
“So, between recruiting, preparing for a bowl, all of that, it was by far and away the most hectic and demanding time of the year,” he said. “Now, everything is just more magnified. These coaches are really hustling these few weeks.”
Harbaugh is among them.
As he celebrated another conference crown following a shutout victory over Iowa last Saturday, he said, “We're going to enjoy this one for a few days.”
In reality, Harbaugh and his staff could only savor it for a matter of hours. There would be no week off for them.
In fact, their busiest time was just about to start.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jim Harbaugh's Michigan football job is especially tough in December
