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Jim Harbaugh's Recruiting Recipe Combines Personal Experience, Michigan's Standard For Cleanliness

This article is more than 4 years old.

For all of Michigan football’s tradition and for all of the charisma and hard-nosed and oft-times hell-bent determination that lies deep within the program’s caretaker, attracting the type of talent that Jim Harbaugh banks on in his quest to take the Wolverines to the next level remains a highly complicated process.

Harbaugh enters his fifth season in Ann Arbor having not yet managed to put the Wolverines in line for their first national championship since 1997. Harbaugh is paid handsomely for his duties and yet, for the $7 million yearly investment his alma mater has made in the former All-America quarterback to oversee one of college football’s most valuable programs, the returns have – at least so far –been minimal – when it comes to the metric by which Michigan fans gauge ultimate success – Big Ten and national titles.

But according to an upcoming book “Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football by New York Times best-selling author John U. Bacon – Harbaugh’s obstacle-filled climb for the top hasn’t been for lack of effort. 

Or, for that matter, spending.

Bacon, who has authored three books that chronicle life inside of Schembechler Hall and the Big Ten, relies on meticulous details to not only provide an insider’s look at Michigan’s closely guarded football secrets but does so from the lens of the behind-the-scenes personalities that Harbaugh has entrusted to help keep the Wolverines on track. Bacon's expertise of college football's inner workings, the NCAA's sometimes head-scratching governance of the sport and his ability to seamlessly navigate Michigan's vaulted football nerve-center that is otherwise reserved for players and coaches allows outsiders access and insight they would not otherwise experience.

While much of the attention is paid toward the on-the-field product under Harbaugh’s watch, Overtime– through Bacon’s sleuthing and careful reporting – investigates how college football’s winningest program – one that generated $127 million in revenue and $75 million in profit between 2016-18, according to Forbes – is built from the inside out through an unwavering standard of playing inside the lines.

That construction plan includes a foundation of recruiting while working within the confines of the $11.6 million that constitutes Michigan’s annual football operating budget. According to Overtime, $6.4 million is invested each year on football scholarships - which the program pays for by check, at full retail price to the school's admissions office — while $159,966 is devoted on each player on Harbaugh’s roster each season.

Selecting whom that money is allocated on each year is part of an arduous two-year recruiting process begins with 4,900 names – a list that is first whittled down to 300 and then eventually shaved to 150 scholarship offers. Each year, 25 players will accept those scholarships to become members of that season’s recruiting class.

Perhaps more interesting than the dollars Michigan spends on football are the standard that recruits are held to if they ever hope to leap and touch the large maize and blue banner that is stretched across the Block M at the 50-yard line inside Michigan Stadium. It’s a standard that Harbaugh and his staff makes clear isn’t held to everywhere across the country.

“We’re doing a better job figuring out who will fit here athletically, academically, and culturally,” Michigan director of recruiting, Matt Dudek, tells Bacon in the book. “All three have to work. A lot of guys can’t make it here. 

“Name another school that competes with the bluebloods athletically – we’re talking Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson – while competing with the bluebloods academically: Stanford, Northwestern, Princeton. Most of the players we recruit are good enough to play for Alabama or Clemson and smart enough to play for Ivy League schools. If you don’t win in the classroom on Monday, you won’t be here for many Saturdays.”

At the center of all the decision-making ultimately is Harbaugh, who himself, was recruited only by two schools out of high school before legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler offered to bring Harbaugh to Ann Arbor from the West Coast at the 11th hour. The coach and the quarterback would go on to have a sometimes complicated, but always caring relationship that would help define not only the player Harbaugh became but that would also characterize the type of coach and recruiter that took over Michigan’s program after it struggled under its two previous coaches, Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke.

Like as with Schembechler, Harbaugh’s relationship with his beloved university was not always cozy. Before being handed the keys to Michigan’s program, Harbaugh – then at Stanford – famously criticized the university from afar, specifically with the way Michigan loosened its academic standards to attract top-tier football talent.

His comments, which were first made in a radio interview and then defended in a conversation with a columnist from the Ann Arbor News, drew sharp criticism from within Michigan’s program and its fanbase. But the episode also caused Harbaugh to consider the practices he now uses to build a program that he once criticized and that changed the expectation he demands from staff members, like Dudek, on a daily basis.

“Look,” Dudek says in the book, “we know there are people who don’t operate on the same moral ground that not only Michigan expects, but that coach Harbaugh demands. So, the last thing I’m doing is going down that rabbit hole – probably the fastest way to get fired around here.

“The good news is we so rarely go so far down a path with a guy whose character we’re not sure about that we get to a point where a kid or his family asks for a bag of money. I’ve never had anyone directly for anything. If they’re going to do that, they probably don’t consider us very long.”

While Harbaugh and Dudek stop short of making direct allegations on how specific programs in the national spotlight go about their recruiting business, neither is afraid to speak to the sullied nature that that the business of big-time college football has become. Bacon, the author, details the covertly clever tactics programs use in paying players.

In Overtime, Bacon examines the NCAA’s allowance for universities to provide players with a full cost of attendance, which provides schools to factor in expenses such as travel, food and laundry – along with other costs not covered by the cost of tuition. At Michigan, Bacon reports that figure comes in at $2,400 for out-of-state players per term both before and after the NCAA made allowances for the full attendance costs. That number only becomes more magnified when compared to SEC programs, which according to the book, totals $5,386 per term at Alabama, $5,586 at Auburn and $5,666 at Tennessee – which represents a 34 percent bump from the previous rate.

Harbaugh, who has made plenty of enemies south of the Mason-Dixon line since taking over at Michigan, has poked the cages of SEC coaches repeatedly and in the book, speaks to the disparity in spending by simply telling Bacon, “(It’s) hard to beat the cheaters.”

Yet, despite the unleveled nature of the playing field as he sees it, Harbaugh continues to sell the program in his own way without crossing the line he insinuates is repeatedly crossed by other programs. Harbaugh’s own experiences as a Michigan player have direct ties to the ways he handles his coaching duties now.

Although he acknowledges that balancing football and academics is far from a perfect science – especially for a player who himself was steered to a less difficult major after wanting to major in history – that a student-athlete’s academic load must factor into the formula.

But as with Schembechler, Harbaugh makes two things perfectly clear from the start of his recruiting: No shortcuts will be taken and at the end of the day, Michigan isn’t for everyone. 

“If you want to make Michigan great, and make yourself great, this is a great place to be,” Harbaugh says in the book. “The ones you have to oversell what we have to offer, you know it’s not going to work. If you don’t get the appeal of the program, of a Michigan education, of the kind of camaraderie you get working with like-minded people – well, I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll probably be happier somewhere else – and maybe we will be, too!”