Michigan Football: What Jim Harbaugh’s new contract really tells us

After Michigan football found replacements for its two coordinator vacancies, hiring Jesse Minter for the defense and promoting Matt Weiss and Sherrone Moore to offensive coordinator, the last order of business was for Jim Harbaugh to finally put pen to paper and sign his extension.

Well, this week he did. At least, his contract details were finally confirmed after everyone really wanted to know the length and the amount of money that Jim signed on for. In case you missed it, here it is:

The contract extension runs for five years (until 2026) and is a year longer than Harbaugh’s last contract extension.

All of this is fine, and it’s obviously a good thing that Jim Harbaugh signed his extension, but let’s look closer at the numbers.

What Jim Harbaugh’s contract extension really tells us

To be completely honest, when I first saw the contract details, they kind of shocked me. I expected Jim Harbaugh’s new base salary to at least be north of $8 million with incentives.

To be honest, I expected the deal to be closer to $10 million per year.

From purely a micro-level, $7 million a year for a Big Ten championship coach is a steal. Warde Manuel worked his magic, and came up with a contract that saved the athletic department big-time money.

On a macro-level though, this contract is very concerning. All offseason, we’ve talked about how Jim Harbaugh wanted a bigger contract and that was possibly one of the reasons that he was holding out on Michigan football, among other things.

While this was shot down by various Michigan insiders like Sam Webb, Chris Balas, and others, as they said money was not an issue in negotiation talks, personally I still am skeptical about that. If I was Jim Harbaugh, why would I not try to leverage more money out of a playoff appearance?

Jim Harbaugh earned a nice bump in pay, as he did something no Michigan football coach had done in 17 years (win a Big Ten title) and no Michigan coach had done in a decade (beat OSU).

On top of all of that, Jim Harbaugh’s buyout is insanely low. Like Albert Breer said, this buyout definitely shouldn’t deter NFL teams from calling in the future. I already wrote about what Jim Harbaugh’s extended flirtation with the NFL should tell us, but this only confirms it even more.

Every single year of Jim Harbaugh’s extension, the buyout price gets lower and lower. Even at its peak in Year 1 of the extension, $3 million is practically nothing compared to what some of these other college coaches buyouts are. NFL teams would be silly not to just pay that little sum if they really want Harbaugh.

Overall, the contract extension is bittersweet. On one hand, the extension is a massive steal, as Jim is the third-highest paid coach in the Big Ten (behind Mel Tucker and James Franklin), while on the other hand, this contract doesn’t quell any future concerns about NFL team’s interest in Jim Harbaugh.

This contract will tell us for the future if Jim Harbaugh was telling the truth about Michigan being where he “wanted to be.”