Michigan Football: Jim Harbaugh deserves credit and criticism

Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh deserves credit for turning around the Wolverines but questioning his lack of titles and key wins is justified.

Jim Harbaugh and his tenure at Michigan football is always an interesting topic. It’s also one that is constantly debated among Wolverines fans.

Some love Harbaugh and stand by him, even as the program has struggled to reach the elite level that was expected when he took the job in December of 2014. Certainly, Harbaugh has been a savior of sorts and there is no denying progress has been made.

Michigan football has won 10 games in three of the past four years, while the same thing just happened from 2007-2014. Rich Rod never sniffed 10 games and Brady Hoke won 11, but then never got there again.

When it comes to recruiting, Michigan football has been killing it. The classes in 2016, 2017 and 2019 were legit and last season, the Wolverines had the top class in the Big Ten for the first time in years.

However, the same old boogeyman still exists and that’s the Ohio State Buckeyes.

That’s what is still holding back Harbaugh, even though he has won 74 percent of his games, which is a big increase over the 60 percent won by Brady Hoke and 41 percent won by Rodriguez.

Hoke proclaimed in his opening press conference that Michigan football could still be a national program. Then, he failed miserably trying to make it so. Harbaugh, in many ways, has succeeded.

The Wolverines have been in two major bowl games. Two in the last three years in fact. That’s as many as Michigan had been to from 2007-2014. His teams have had a shot to win the Big Ten East on the final weekend three times in four years. Under Hoke and Rodriguez that didn’t happen even once.

But with Harbaugh, it’s a double-edged sword. He did so much at Stanford and in the NFL and even early at Michigan football, turning out 10 wins in one year and getting the team within inches of Indianapolis in year two, that expectations kept increasing. Now it’s like some expect Michigan to be Alabama, even though it never will be.

For all intents and purposes, Michigan is an elite Big Ten program. It just needs to win the damn conference championship and that goes back to beating Ohio State. That’s Harbaugh’s kryptonite.

If he doesn’t solve that issue soon, it won’t matter how many times he beats Michigan State or Wisconsin or Penn State. He has returned Michigan football to national prominence and for that, he deserves all the credit in the world. He did it quickly and on that promise, he has delivered.

Harbaugh has also built a program Michigan football fans can be proud to support. The academics are off the charts and there aren’t reports of cheating. The program has a clean image and it’s something Harbaugh has worked hard to create.

But the only thing that matters now is beating Ohio State. Urban Meyer is gone and the window is wide open. If Harbaugh continues to fail, criticism will come his way and he will deserve it. But you also can’t deny everything he has done for the Wolverines and if you can’t see that, you are blind.

If you had told me Harbaugh would win 38 games in his first four years that day in December, I would have taken it. If you told me he still hadn’t won a Big Ten title, back then, it wouldn’t have seemed like a big surprise. The rebuilding job was big, his early success just accelerated expectations.

But now the time for excuses is over. Harbaugh has everything he needs to beat Ohio State and win the Big Ten and if he doesn’t do it soon, he deserves to be shown the door. We all want him to be the next Bo Schembechler, but with his record, I’m also worried about him becoming the next John Cooper.