Jim Harbaugh should stay with Michigan football; there's plenty more to accomplish

Les Snead and I were sitting in his office, a glorified temporary trailer at his team’s glorified temporary training facility in suburban Los Angeles, when he brought up the idea of failure and the powerful permanence of it.

The Rams general manager and I were speaking last week about a wide range of subjects when the conversation turned toward winning it all and what it took to get there. Then Snead suddenly veered away from all the glory talk.

“The one thing, too, I tell people,” he said, “is when you’ve gone to the Super Bowl and lost it, at that moment you never want to feel that feeling again. You never want to get there again and lose it.”

Before Snead constructed the Rams team that won Super Bowl 56, he built the 2018 team that lost to New England Patriots in Super Bowl 53. It was clear in his tone and in his expression that even with a championship on his résumé, the loss still haunted him.

Instinctively, I thought about Jim Harbaugh. I thought about the decision I knew was coming, the one he’s thinking about right now after he interviewed for the L.A. Chargers' job Monday.

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Stay at Michigan, where he can try to build a dynasty, or go to the NFL and try to fill the hole created by his San Francisco 49ers' loss to his brother’s Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl 47.

“Like there's something about that loss,” Snead said of his own experience. “I can't explain it. It's a hole that even if you get there again, we were fortunate to win it, that hole is still there.”

Let me be very clear, and I hope Harbaugh sees this: He should stay at Michigan, because that’s truly where his legacy lies. His legacy in Ann Arbor is secure: one of the program’s greatest quarterbacks who returned to resurrect the Wolverines’ greatness by leading them to dominance over Ohio State and to only their second national title since 1948.

There's still more for Harbaugh to achieve in Ann Arbor; he's not on the level of Bo Schembechler, or even Fielding Yost, for example. If he wins another national title at U-M, though, Harbaugh will be in that conversation. His name will echo through campus long after he shuffles off his mortal coil. He might even get a hall named after him or a statue erected in his honor.

Of course, there are several other considerations. Quarterback J.J. McCarthy just declared for the NFL draft; the Wolverines have Alex Orji returning and four-star prospect Jadyn Davis as an early enrollee, but there’s no clear starter, let alone a clearly elite quarterback who can match McCarthy’s play.

It’s worth noting McCarthy chose to leave after he spoke with Harbaugh, who may have just given him his NFL assessment and blessing, or he may have tipped his hand and told McCarthy he was also on his way out the door. Only two people really know what was said.

Michigan has already reportedly offered Harbaugh a six-year contract worth $11.5 million annually , which would make him college football’s highest-paid coach, according to a Yahoo report that also stated Harbaugh wants a clause in his contract that would protect him from firing over the Wolverines' two ongoing NCAA investigations.

On the surface, it sounds like Harbaugh wants to stay at U-M — but only if it’s on his terms. I don’t blame him for that because he hasn’t had the smoothest tenure. Of course he would want assurances against any retribution that might come his way from pearl-clutching administrators if the NCAA lowers the boom.

There’s a lot to worry about for Harbaugh if he stays. But more than that, I keep thinking about what Snead said about the void left from an unfulfilled Super Bowl title — and Snead didn’t even lose to his older brother by three stinking points.

If you thought Harbaugh was just joking when he said his first championship allowed him to sit at the “big person’s table” with his father and brother, who have their titles — father Jack won a Division I-AA football crown with Western Kentucky — I assure you there was a lot more to it. As anyone in Michigan can tell you, “little brother” syndrome is real. I once saw Harbaugh get great pleasure from being called a piece of “twisted blue steel” during a story John told about his kid brother nearly drowning him while they wrestled in the Florida surf as young men.

Harbaugh has not only measured himself against his older brother but there’s also an interesting dynamic I observed between the two brothers and their dad, Jack. I once spent about 20 minutes in their presence and it was clear that Jack and John are very similar. They act almost like brothers.

Jim Harbaugh, however, doesn’t talk or joke the same way. And I’m betting he would love nothing more than to achieve the ultimate distinction in his family: being a champ in college and the NFL.

If Harbaugh does go to the NFL, I hope at least he picks the team (and city) that will appreciate him, because something else I learned last week in L.A. is that my hometown still doesn’t care about its NFL teams. Not even the Rams, whose fan base is tepid and whose press conferences were poorly attended during a playoff week just two years after they won it all. The Chargers, meanwhile, couldn’t sustain interest in San Diego, let alone now in their role as L.A.’s second banana.

Sadly, Harbaugh’s departure for the NFL feels inevitable, because of that Super Bowl hole that’s been there for a decade. Snead compared his own aching doubt to an Olympian who took home silver or bronze.

“Like you got a medal,” he said, “but while every day you wake up and go, ‘What if we’d done this or that and just gotten that gold?’

“It’s a tough thing to live with but a very, very, very sharp motivator to say, ‘OK, is there something we can do and can we do a little bit more and get back there and actually win that thing?’ ”

I believe Harbaugh can and will win a Super Bowl if he returns to the NFL. But it won’t happen overnight and he’s already 60. If it doesn’t work out, it would be hard for him to return to the college ranks and repeat the success he’s had at Michigan.

I can appreciate the need for an elite coach and competitor such as Harbaugh to fill his Lombardi Trophy-shaped void. But I hope he considers the alternative. Because even though a second college championship wouldn’t fill the NFL hole, it would cement his legacy among one of football’s most storied programs. And it might just be enough to dish out a little crow at the big person’s table.

Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jim Harbaugh aches for a Super Bowl, despite work to do with Michigan