Michigan Football: Jim Harbaugh’s contract situation rife with uncertainty

A trusted source for inside info about Michigan football said nobody knows what will happen with head coach Jim Harbaugh right now.

The rumors about Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh over the past month or so have been rampant but the season is officially over and we still don’t have an answer as to whether or not Harbaugh will be back for 2021 and beyond.

All signs seem to be pointing in that direction or at least they were as there were reports of a contract extension being offered, even if it was a lower base pay with a lower buyout.

The person who reported that contract offer or at least that it had been discussed was well-known author and Michigan football historian John U. Bacon.

He’s literally written a bunch of books on Michigan and just wrote one on Jim Harbaugh that’s well worth your time too. So Bacon has long been a trusted inside source for Michigan information and when he tweeted Monday that he had no clue what was going on and didn’t know anyone who did, it certainly raised some eyebrows.

We know that the meeting Warde Manuel and Harbaugh said they were going to have after the season already happened. So what’s the next step?

Certainly, some parameters for a deal had to be discussed at that point. Harbaugh told recruits and others he was going to bet on himself, but I’m starting to wonder what the hell that means?

I assumed it meant he was willing to accept the three-year extension which was supposedly laden with incentives. There was also talk of money set aside to overhaul the coaching staff, which needs to be done, especially on the defensive side of the ball.

But what if Harbaugh means he is willing to go into 2021 as a lame-duck coach? And the bet he’s willing to make is that he will have enough success to earn the kind of contract he wants next season for Michigan.

Harbaugh is wired a little differently, but he’s not that nuts? Is he?

That simply cannot be an option and Manuel needs to make that clear. Holding together the 2021 recruiting class with all the rumors surrounding Harbaugh was hard enough and having him as a lame-duck coach would doom the class of 2022.

But from a negotiating perspective, if Harbaugh is unwilling to accept a lower deal and the reported three-year extension, it puts the ball in Manuel’s court. Either he allows Jim to coach a year as a lame duck or he fires or meets his demands for an extension.

We know that Manuel doesn’t want to fire Harbaugh. For one, it would be costly and then you would have the added cost of paying a new coach and staff, which wouldn’t be cheap either, especially if the Wolverines went for someone like Matt Campbell.

The other thing at play is that the longer this goes, the more genuine the NFL interest could become. Re-treads with a lot worse records than Harbaugh have gotten second chances in the NFL. He won at an elite level, so at some point, some team will give him a chance if he wants it.

That would leave Michigan scrambling late in the process to find a coach. The time is now to make that move and allow the guy to build a staff. You can even make the same case for Harbaugh. If he’s going to be around, he needs to make staff decisions as soon as possible.

The optimist in me is still holding out hope that something will get done this week and the Michigan football team can finally move forward. But if this isn’t done by Christmas, who knows when we will get a resolution and that’s not good for the Wolverines.