A look back at Jim Harbaugh's quirkiest moments at Michigan football after Chargers move

A new era of Michigan football is coming.

Jim Harbaugh is off to the NFL after reportedly accepting a deal with the Los Angeles Chargers to take over as their head coach. Weeks after he led Michigan to the mountaintop of the sport with their first national championship, he is off for his second stint leading a team in the NFL.

Harbaugh, who helped turn around Michigan’s program from a dark period it had fallen into since Lloyd Carr stepped down in 2007, ushered in change during his nine seasons in Ann Arbor, all while cementing a reputation for himself as a uniquely odd dude.

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Ever since he grabbed the reins in December 2014, Harbaugh has delivered a litany of weird, quirky, and head-scratching quotes and decisions. Along with being one of the most successful college coaches in recent history, Harbaugh developed a reputation as someone who would get into social media squabbles, call Darth Vader “a jackhammer," deliver sermons about the importance of different protein sources, unabashedly talk about his love of milk and idolize Judge Judy.

Since his tenure at Michigan is over, here is a look at some of the most memorable Harbaugh moments from the last nine years that made you say, “That dude is definitely wired a little different than most people.”

Harbaugh shows skin

One of the enduring images of Harbaugh's tenure at Michigan is him conducting a high school football camp in the summer of 2015 while shirtless. He jumped into the action during a game of Peru ball — a game he picked up during his missionary trip in Peru the month before — with high schoolers, which left an enduring image of Harbaugh’s pasty chest before he even coached a game at Michigan.

"I was like a pig in slop," Harbaugh said according to a 2015 Free Press story. "Man, you guys are in shape. You've got a heart for football, a face for football and I love being around you guys. That was a fun, fun day."

Vitamin S(teak)

Harbaugh loved to talk about nutrition, specifically two of his favorite foods, steak and milk. Harbaugh has consistently labeled steak and milk, two sources of high amounts of protein, as two of the most important “natural steroids” to exist, along with sleep and water. 

"I truly believe the No. 1 natural steroid is sleep and the No. 2 natural steroid is milk, whole milk, and three would be water," he said in 2015 on his weekly radio show. "Four would be steak."

Harbaugh’s love of the two foods was on display at a meal at Ruth's Chris Steak House in Ann Arbor following Michigan’s 78-0 win over Rutgers during his first season. Instead of finding a nice red to pair with his hunk of beef, Harbaugh posted a picture of him with a wine glass filled to the brim with milk.

Whole milk is an important distinction for Harbaugh, not the “candy-ass 2%” as he called the low-fat dairy option in 2015.

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He was specific about what kinds of protein people should eat, prioritizing steak. In 2018, Harbaugh warned former quarterback Wilton Speight against eating chicken because they were “a nervous bird” but walked back those statements this November shortly following his three-game suspension for Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal.

“I’m the one who takes care of them," Harbaugh said this season. "The respect that I have for chickens — there was a time when I said a chicken was a nervous bird — I was dead wrong. These chickens are low maintenance and high production."

Even though his love of milk is well-documented, Harbaugh has used another drink to wash down a bowl of cereal. On Michigan’s athletic website, his son Jay, the team’s special teams coordinator, said his dad has used Gatorade to eat cereal because milk wasn’t available, and that shows what type of person he is.

"That kind of says a little bit about him,” Jay said. “Just gets the job done. Doesn't really care what it takes, not picky."

Social media spats

Back when the Blue Bird app was known as Twitter, Harbaugh had plenty to say at times.

Though he hasn’t sent a post in over three years, Harbaugh has always shown he’s ready to scrap with other people in the industry. He took a shot at MSU and Mark Dantonio, calling out MSU’s suspended players on the 2016 team, called out former Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith for Ohio State's tattoo scandal, called out former Alabama coach Nick Saban and current Georgia coach Kirby Smart for discourse around recruiting camps in the South, and traded words with ESPN’s Paul Finebaum, whom he called “Pete” in his tweet.

Harbaugh created his social media account at the beginning of 2015, shortly after he took the job with Michigan. His most recent post is from Sept. 2020 before the start of the COVID-altered college football season.

Another social media moment Harbaugh had was the accidental controversy that started on campus shortly after he was hired. In 2015, he sent out a tweet about how his team would watch “American Sniper” after the university canceled showing the movie about a sniper in the Iraq War. He met with students upset with the post during a 90-minute meeting with school officials.

Real personal recruiting

When he first arrived, Harbaugh had a flair for the spectacular and downright ridiculous in terms of recruiting tactics to try to entice teenagers to play at Michigan. Most famously, Harbaugh had a sleepover with top kicking recruit Quinn Nordin, who ended up playing at U-M from 2016-20. He also scaled a tree while visiting linebacker David Long Jr., who ended up playing for West Virginia. Harbaugh spent the night at another recruit’s house, four-star defensive lineman Connor Murphy who went to USC, and also attended classes with him.

Rounding first

Harbaugh loves baseball. So much so that when he was hired, he spent time as the first base coach for two teams, the Detroit Tigers and Oakland A’s. He was the first base coach for a Tigers’ spring training game during the warmup for the 2016 season, and spent three innings directing runners to leg out a double. A few days later, after helping a woman in a car crash on I-94 in between, Harbaugh was back 90 feet from home as the first base coach for the A’s. When talking about the experience, steak came up again for Harbaugh.

"The A's to me, the way they compete, the team, the different way they think, they are jungle lions,'' Harbaugh said on an A's blog. "Zoo lions get tired of Zebra after a while and want filet mignon. Not jungle lions.''

Divine blessing

Not many people can say they’ve met the Pope. And the list of people who can say they’ve given him a football helmet and Jordan sneakers is an even smaller list of one. On Michigan’s offseason trip to Rome in 2017, Michigan’s team got a front-row seat to Pope Francis’ service in St. Peter’s Square and gave the highest member of the Catholic Church a winged maize-and-blue helmet and a pair of matching Jordans.

Harbaugh showed his pious nature again in the lead-up to Michigan’s matchup against the Rose Bowl this past season. During Rose Bowl media days, the former Michigan skipper said “Solomon would have been a great coach, too. I have that feeling. Jesus would have been a five-star. He would have been a five-star player, no doubt about it. He would have been a Hall of Fame coach.”

Famous friends

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Go try to find someone who is as big an advocate for Judge Judy as Harbaugh is (spoiler, it would be pretty hard to do). Ever since getting to Ann Arbor, Harbaugh was open about his affinity about Judge Judy, whom he congratulated on a contract extension in 2015 shortly after being hired at Michigan. 

He invoked the idea of due process while talking about Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal in November, and said he’s learned about legal proceedings because he is such a big Judge Judy fan.

"Trust is big to me," Harbaugh said in 2013 at the NFL Combine. "I'm a big fan of the 'Judge Judy' show. When you lie in Judge Judy's courtroom, it's over. Your credibility is completely lost and you stand no chance of winning that case. I learned that from her. It's very powerful. And true. If somebody lies to you, how can you trust anything they say after that?"

This season, Harbaugh also quoted another favorite TV show of his, “Ted Lasso”, which drew inspiration from his quirks and wardrobe while writing the show. Before playing Ohio State, Harbaugh delivered a one-liner about the bathing suits of mothers to sum up the locker room’s mentality.

"It's like that Ted Lasso show," Harbaugh told reporters in late November. "Belief. What comes out of that is believe. And I'm just so proud, so proud of our team. Despite that noise, our locker room's in one piece. And I like that. For me, locker rooms, a lot like my mom's bathing suits. Like to see 'em in one piece."

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jim Harbaugh's quirkiest moments at Michigan football after NFL move