Michigan Football: Jim Harbaugh at least got best of Mark Dantonio

Michigan football hasn’t gotten the best of Ohio State during the Jim Harbaugh era, but Harbaugh certainly got the best of Mark Dantonio.

Jim Harbaugh hasn’t done many of the things that Michigan football fans wanted him to do when he was hired as the Wolverines head coach. But one thing he did do, was in back the state.

Harbaugh came to Michigan at a time when Mark Dantonio and the Spartans owned the rivalry and the Paul Bunyan Trophy. Brady Hoke was able to beat Dantonio once, but it was clear that the Spartans had surpassed Michigan as the top football program in the state.

Only once Harbaugh came back, it didn’t last long.

Sure, there was the debacle back in 2015, the season that ended with a Big Ten championship and a trip to the College Football Playoff. That will always be the defining season of Dantonio’s career, at least in my book. But it was also the beginning of the end.

Dantonio would sneak out one last victory over the Wolverines back in 2017, which was also at the Big House, but after that, the tide finally turned.

Harbaugh and Michigan football registered its first road win over a ranked team at Michigan State since 2006 and the Wolverines followed up the 14-point with a blowout win last November.

Turns out, that will be the last time that Harbaugh and Dantonio face off against each other for the Paul Bunyan Trophy and that means Jim will wind up with a 3-2 record. That’s following the news that Dantonio has decided to step down, which was reported Tuesday.

While the move comes as a surprise, with some new allegations coming out about recruiting violations, the timing isn’t all that mysterious.

“After much reflection and discussion with my family, I feel that it is now time for a change as we enter into a new decade of Michigan State Football,” Dantonio said. “…I will miss it all but feel the sacrifices that I have made away from my family must now become my priority at this time in my life.”

It seems strange that Dantonio would commit to coaching this season and next turn around and retire unless he wasn’t driven in some way by the cloud of wrongdoing overtaking his program, but either way, I say good riddance.

The only sad part about him leaving is that it makes it possible for Michigan State to rebound much faster, because the way things were going, Harbaugh was going to rack up even more wins in the years to come.