Zach Godsey
Jim Harbaugh led the Michigan Wolverines to their 12th national championship this past season.
On January 24, the Los Angeles Chargers football team announced one of the most groundbreaking coaching hires in the NFL's last few years. The Chargers hired Jim Harbaugh, former Chargers quarterback and brother of Baltimore Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh. Although Harbaugh will be new to this Chargers organization, he will most definitely not be new to coaching football.
Harbaugh has an extensive career as a coach in both college and the NFL. He started his coaching journey at the University of San Diego, where he coached for two seasons before being named head coach at Stanford University, where he coached for another three. Following his stint at Stanford, Harbaugh got his first head coaching opportunity in the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers, where he showed that he was an excellent coach at both the collegiate and professional levels. Harbaugh left the 49ers with a 44-19-1 regular season record before deciding to go back to college coaching, this time at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. This is where Harbaugh is perhaps most well-known.
Since his start at Michigan in 2015, Harbaugh made a name for himself as one of the most elite college football coaches, slowly transforming the program into the Big 10 powerhouse that we know today. Of course, this includes Michigan’s unstoppable march to the national championship this past January, where they claimed a breezy 34-13 win over Washington to crown them the best in the nation. This was Michigan’s 12th national championship, putting Harbaugh up there with the all-time best college coaches, with a record of 144-42.
Now, Harbaugh makes his return to the NFL, as he is leaving Michigan for the Chargers on a five-year deal. Due to his success in both the NFL and at the collegiate level, Harbaugh has been one of the most sought-after coaching candidates, making his decision to sign with the Chargers big news within the football community. As Harbaugh steps up to coach a team that went 5-12 this past season, he already has his work cut out for him. In order to start making changes within the Chargers organization, Harbaugh will need to surround himself with a strong team of players and coaches in order to rebuild the Chargers from this past season. However, if anyone is up to the job, it is Jim Harbaugh. As Chargers president John Spanos once said, “Jim is the one.”