I have said this for years, but I think there is legitimately something wrong with the guy. Maybe he took a few too many hits to the head during his playing days. If you watch his interviews and media availability sessions, he is incredibly weird. The way he talks, the way he looks, the way he lies and/or is evasive over the most innocuous of questions, etc. He might as well just wear a "sociopath" sign around his neck. Before any of this latest news, if you would have asked me to guess the one coach most likely to be involved in all this crazy sh!t (manifestos, etc.), my immediate response would have been Harbaugh.
Any of these things looked at invidually might just seem like harmless quirks, but taken in totality with his other sociopathic behavior, I think it is more a sign of his mental illness.
* Harbaugh does sleepovers at the homes of recruits. In one particular case, a recruiting dead period ended at midnight. Like some crazed stalker, Jimbo is knocking on the door of this top recruit at 12:01 AM. In the words of the recruit, "he said we can watch a movie, see how well we gel and he said he would sleep over after that." The recruit offered him the guest bedroom, but Jim insisted on sleeping on the floor in the recruit's room. Fortunately, the recruit ultimately had sense enough not to become a "Michigan man."
* Harbaugh wears cleats everywhere, and never takes them off (at least in public). He wears them driving, he wears them flying, he wears them in restaurants, he wears them lifting weights, he wears them in the homes of recruits. One former player said he has never seen Harbaugh without his cleats on. One five-star recruit told the story of Harbaugh coming into his home, which has hardwood floors, and Jimbo refused to take his cleats off as he is waltzing around. As the recruit said, "after that, it was over."
* Harbaugh harrasses his players if he sees them eating white meat. From an article on the topic...
Former Michigan QB Wilton Speight told Bleacher Report that Harbaugh spoke with him privately to advise the QB not to eat chicken.
Speight, confused, asked for an explanation, and Harbaugh replied by saying chicken is “a nervous bird.” Of course, that makes no sense, but Harbaugh apparently has a theory about white meat.
“He thinks some type of sickness injected its way into the human population when people began eating white meats instead of beef and pork,” Speight said. Yes, this sounds too absurd to be true, but Speight was adamant that Harbaugh “believes it, 100 percent.”
As Pete Carroll once famously asked Harbaugh after a game, "What's your deal?" When it comes to Jimbo, that question goes well beyond a single game.
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2023 9:45 am
by buckmarkduck
Add to that the story Neuheizal tells about his interaction with Jom after a game. Said after UCLA lost to Stanford, they met to shake hands, and Jim slapped him hard on the back, and said “how did you like that!” And ram off.
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:59 am
by gogreen55
buckmarkduck wrote:Add to that the story Neuheizal tells about his interaction with Jom after a game. Said after UCLA lost to Stanford, they met to shake hands, and Jim slapped him hard on the back, and said “how did you like that!” And ram off.
Lol, yeah. Rick loves to tell that story all the time.
Harbaugh did the same sort of thing in the NFL after a game when "shaking hands" with Jim Schwartz. Schwartz proceeds to chase after him and a brawl between the two teams ensues.
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2023 12:26 pm
by Duck07
Rick Neuheisel is an asshole in private so I have zero sympathy for him.
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:44 pm
by greenyellow
It's really strange how many weird Harbaugh stories there are out there and almost every single one is backed up by former players, staff, coaches, and journalists. There's absolutely no reason for someone who's a former NFL star and good FBS coach to need to do so many crazy things.
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2023 11:34 pm
by 5$
Please don't be so hard on Michigan, they deserve this it's their time. There's no way they get any sort of advantage from sign stealing....
They must be the top-recruiting school in the nation year in and year out (I didn't check) and most hard working and naturally talented.
I mean look at this stat, is a team going to run the ball or pass the ball. Michigan's talent is so high it's almost like they are ready for anything.
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2023 9:49 am
by Duck07
Quite honestly one of the funniest things in a while
I'm starting to think the correct defense for Michigan isn't "This wasn't so bad," it's "Okay but wasn't it kinda hilarious"?
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2023 7:54 pm
by Phalanx
Mike Leach had some interesting things to say about lip-reading that might also apply here. Specifically the bit about how to get a play caller and 11 players to instantly react in unison once you've deciphered the play being called:
Phalanx wrote:Mike Leach had some interesting things to say about lip-reading that might also apply here. Specifically the bit about how to get a play caller and 11 players to instantly react in unison once you've deciphered the play being called:
Interesting read in the athletic yesterday interviewing 50 fbs coaches about how serious they see this issue.
One defensive assistant at a Big 12 school who specialized in legal signal stealing at a previous job insists the difference between hunting for hints in TV copy and having a full game of footage you’ve filmed is massive. The coach believes it’s worth several touchdowns on both offense and defense if Michigan had a reliable system in place to relay the intel to coordinators during games.
“I mean, you’re shooting fish in a barrel,” the defensive coach said. “If I was able to do what Michigan was doing, that would be the difference between big-time winning and losing. If you filmed all the signals from a game, you’d take that and put it into the film system and match up the play-by-play with what the opponent is running. And then, I mean, it’s over. Having a steady film of the signals during a game would be mind-blowing.
“To me, it would be the same as going and filming somebody’s practice. If I was on the Michigan staff and was part of that operation, I would be very uncomfortable using that info. To me, that’s a big moral line in the sand that was crossed.”
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2023 12:47 pm
by Alan
Big 10 coaches want something done this year, per 90 minutes phone call to big 10 commissioner. Regular weekly coaches call with the commissioner, Jim hung up after the standard 30 weekly call, the other 9 coaches stayed on the line with the commissioner demanding some punishment be handed out this season, per ESPN.
bellsduck wrote:Interesting read in the athletic yesterday interviewing 50 fbs coaches about how serious they see this issue.
One defensive assistant at a Big 12 school who specialized in legal signal stealing at a previous job insists the difference between hunting for hints in TV copy and having a full game of footage you’ve filmed is massive. The coach believes it’s worth several touchdowns on both offense and defense if Michigan had a reliable system in place to relay the intel to coordinators during games.
“I mean, you’re shooting fish in a barrel,” the defensive coach said. “If I was able to do what Michigan was doing, that would be the difference between big-time winning and losing. If you filmed all the signals from a game, you’d take that and put it into the film system and match up the play-by-play with what the opponent is running. And then, I mean, it’s over. Having a steady film of the signals during a game would be mind-blowing.
“To me, it would be the same as going and filming somebody’s practice. If I was on the Michigan staff and was part of that operation, I would be very uncomfortable using that info. To me, that’s a big moral line in the sand that was crossed.”
It's clear based on the reactions from coaches that this is clearly a bigger issue than some on here seem to think. Points to what I was saying around sample sizes, and being able to pull every signal, as opposed to some random signals you catch on a broadcast to piece together. Also, the B1G coaches met with the B1G commissioner yesterday urging him to punish Michigan. This isn't commonplace, and is clearly a pretty big deal. Let's see if the NCAA has the balls to keep them out of the playoffs. I don't see any scenario where they should be allowed to participate in the playoff this season. It should also end with Harbaugh gone, and potential sanctions for Michigan for multiple years.
Re: Cheating *ss Michigan
Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2023 1:59 pm
by pezsez1
It's clear based on the reactions from coaches that this is clearly a bigger issue than some on here seem to think. Points to what I was saying around sample sizes, and being able to pull every signal, as opposed to some random signals you catch on a broadcast to piece together. Also, the B1G coaches met with the B1G commissioner yesterday urging him to punish Michigan. This isn't commonplace, and is clearly a pretty big deal. Let's see if the NCAA has the balls to keep them out of the playoffs. I don't see any scenario where they should be allowed to participate in the playoff this season. It should also end with Harbaugh gone, and potential sanctions for Michigan for multiple years.
Agree to all of this. The more we learn, the worse this gets for Michigan.
Also agree about the NCAA. An immediate postseason ban seems like the correct response to this degree of cheating. Let's see if the NCAA still has any spine or if it really is just a dead fish.