Michigan Football: Jim Harbaugh Failing The Tests Urban Meyer Passed
Jim Harbaugh and Urban Meyer are comparable coaches. But Michigan football’s star is lagging behind in accomplishments and accolades.
One of the great tragedies of being a Michigan fan for the last 15 years is that the Wolverines have been consistently owned by archrival Ohio State.
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Just to paint a picture of what this domination has looked like:
Ohio State has won five in a row and 13 of the last 15. You have to go back to the 1999 and 2000 seasons to see the last time Michigan won two in a row. Only once since 2005 has Ohio State not been a top-15 team in this game. The combined score over the last 10 years is Ohio State 330, Michigan 191.
The Wolverines’ next win over the Buckeyes will be the most celebrated and sought-after in program history.
Why is it, though, that in 2017, in Jim Harbaugh’s third year in Ann Arbor, Michigan is still trying to get on par with Ohio State? Was the savior not erected at a Dec. 30 press conference in 2014?
Whether or not Harbaugh blew past expectations and set the bar too high for himself in 2015 is irrelevant. Frankly, it’s a stupendous attempt to equate Harbaugh’s first season with Brady Hoke’s 11-2 2011 campaign that had the heavens singing and—oh yeah—included Michigan’s last win over Ohio State.
But in circles where Harbaugh is regularly credited with being a top-tier coach in the college game, it’s often ignored that he’s not even the best coach in his division. That title has belonged to Urban Meyer since the day he took the Ohio State job. In six seasons with the Buckeyes, Meyer has lost eight games. He’s taken the program to two College Football Playoff appearances (while all Michigan faithful can do is cry while they poke at the Buckeyes’ 31-0 loss to Clemson last season).
These are things that make Meyer’s Ohio State tenure better than Harbaugh’s at Michigan.
“Now, wait a minute! Meyer has had three more seasons than Harbaugh!” I hear you, but did you pay attention from 2012 to 2014? The Buckeyes didn’t lose a conference game. Their national championship came in 2015 (the 2014 season), days after Harbaugh was hired up north.
So what about that 2-0 head-to-head record against Harbaugh? Yes, that also makes Meyer the better coach here. His team’s performance in the second half of the 2015 game was one of the best you could hope to muster up. Then in 2016, the Buckeyes managed to win despite being outplayed virtually all game.
Let’s face it, though: Performing better independent of your competition, and even getting the better of him the first two times you see the field together, does not automatically mean the overall upper hand has been won. But if Meyer and Harbaugh were to face similar tests, then we could compare results and get an even clearer picture. See where this is going?
Let’s go back to the 2014 season, when Ohio State won the national championship. Just a couple weeks before that season began, the Buckeyes announced they would be without quarterback Braxton Miller, the reigning Big Ten MVP for two straight years. In trots redshirt freshman J.T. Barrett, who leads Ohio State to an 11-1 regular season. Of course, Barrett broke his ankle late against the Wolverines. It then became third-string quarterback Cardale Jones’ job to win the Big Ten championship and two playoff games, which he did.
That was Meyer’s third season at Ohio State. In his third season at Michigan, Harbaugh is facing very similar circumstances. His starting quarter, Wilton Speight, got hurt against Purdue. The original backup, fifth-year senior John O’Korn, was too ineffective to keep playing. So in the eighth game of the season, Harbaugh turned to redshirt freshman Brandon Peters, originally the third-string quarterback. Peters is questionable after suffering a concussion against Wisconsin, but Michigan’s quarterback shuffling has been much less graceful than Ohio State’s.
How about a youth movement too? Ohio State entered the 2016 season as one of the least experienced teams in college football. Many regarded it as a foregone conclusion that the Buckeyes would take at least a small step back. And they did, if you consider 11-2 and a playoff berth to be regression.
How is Michigan’s current youth movement coming along? Not bad at all, honestly. The defense returned one starter and has bottled up every team except for Penn State. It’s a little different on the offense, where signs of future greatness are there (Donovan Peoples-Jones, Ceasar Ruiz, Brandon Peters). But this is an offense that’s scoring 21.5 points per game (No. 115 in FBS). The future looks good, sure, but other teams have done better.
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And that is the crux of this argument. Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh have faced virtually the same tests in their times at Ohio State and Michigan. Yes, the Wolverines have won 10 games in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2002-2003 under Lloyd Carr, but Harbaugh has never gone toe-to-toe with Meyer in the trophy case. He’s done it once on the field, and he lost.