Last month, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said it would be “disrespectful” to link him to potential NFL openings. After Saturday’s double-overtime road win over Indiana, Harbaugh was asked about the potential opening with the NFL team located in the same state.
“Stop,” Harbaugh said before the reporter even finished the question, via Nick Baumgardner of MLive.com. “Just stop yourself. No comment.”
It’s unknown whether anyone mustered the nerve to pose a similar question on Saturday to Alabama coach Nick Saban, who has been linked more prominently to the Indianapolis Colts job.
Despite Harbaugh’s link to the Colts (he’s in the franchise’s Ring of Honor and nearly took the team to the Super Bowl in 1995), Saban makes much more sense. Harbaugh surely wouldn’t leave his alma mater after only one season, and Saban already has outstayed his normal shelf-life for turning miserable -- and he undoubtedly views his failure as coach of the Dolphins as the proverbial spot on the hood of the cars he used to wash at his father’s service station.
As former Saban colleague with the Browns, the mysterious Ernie Adams, says at page 227 of The Education of a Coach, “The number one criteria for being a genius in this business is to have a great quarterback, and in New England [Bill Belichick] had one, and in Cleveland he did not.”
In Indianapolis (or Tennessee) Saban would have one; in Miami he did not.
But this is supposed to be about Harbaugh. It would be a shock if he goes anywhere after only one year in Ann Arbor.
