Michigan Football: No Depth Chart? No Big Deal

Jim Harbaugh hasn’t released Michigan football’s roster or depth chart for this season, which is creating havoc. It’s really not a big deal, though.

The season hasn’t even started and folks are already questioning Jim Harbaugh’s judgment. “Where’s the roster?” “Why can’t we see the depth chart?” “Other coaches publish theirs. What’s wrong with Jim Harbaugh?”

Uh, nothing.

And why would Michigan football want a coach like other coaches?

I’m not saying that Urban Meyer, Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher are cookie-cutter coaches; I’m sure there are distinctive quirks of personality that emerge from time to time, perhaps among their closest friends or in unguarded moments. I can’t think of an example at the moment, but let’s just assume that there is a world of difference between Fisher (“Great players understand great moments”) and Saban (“Mediocre people don’t like high achievers and high achievers don’t like mediocre people”).

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Meyer is way out there, of course, pushing the boundaries of propriety with his bursts of invention: “It is so easy to be average. It takes a little something to be special. Why be around average?”

Why indeed?

These comparisons come to mind as Shawn Windsor of the Detroit Free Press takes Jim Harbaugh to task for withholding a roster and depth chart until Aug. 30. The headline (“Harbaugh’s Unconventional Methods With U-M Depth Chart Have Gone Too Far”) indicates a greater level of frustration than a beat reporter might ordinarily feel in trying to size up a team’s chances of pulling past Ohio State and Penn State in the tough Big Ten East.

By “Unconventional,” Windsor means not like the decisions Clemson, Alabama, and Ohio State have made in publishing their depth charts. By “Gone Too Far,” Windsor may mean that Harbaugh has willfully disregarded the sanctity of the relationship between coaches and fans, but he also suggests that Michigan’s coach has let down the side, chickened out, to some degree.

In describing what he calls “unspoken arrangements,” the conventions of preseason reporting, Windsor argues that arrangements such as the publication of depth charts need no “up-ending,” to use his term. He goes on to say, “The proof is in the winning in places like Tuscaloosa, Clemson, and Columbus.”

Yikes! Man Up, Harbaugh!

And here’s the flip side of the argument.

This is a very young and uncommonly talented Michigan team, one in which almost every position could be up for grabs. Harbaugh has two choices: Pick the guys, set the roster, publish the chart, or, let players compete right up to the final moment. Yes, reporters and fans have to wait to find out who’s starting, but the best mix of players has more time to be revealed in the last week of practice before heading to Dallas to take on Florida at Jerry World.

And, in what close observers of this chapter in Michigan football have come to appreciate, Jim Harbaugh is a great recruiter, coach and motivator because he believes in the players who come to Ann Arbor, believes that any any one of them can be the “next man up,” believes that any one of them is one play away from being the player who makes a season.

Yes, this is a young Michigan team, but a number of players who did not start last season have had significant game experience, and a number of new players have been in the trenches with old hands throughout the preseason workouts. Fans may be aching to see the season get underway, but the publication of a depth chart is a blip on the screen compared to the importance of finding the right combination to send battered gators back to their swamp.

Next: Top 10 running backs in Michigan football

Maybe we can just take a step back and trust the guy who has put Michigan back on the map.

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