Harbaugh makin’ friends

Jimmy Harbaugh is doing a fine job of making new friends in the college football world. He's already done a fabulous job of ticking off two of the biggest football universities in the free world. You may or may not remember the somewhat biting comments he made about his alma mater. When speaking about his new school he decided to burn some bridges.

"College football needs Stanford. We're looking not for student athletes but scholar-athletes. No other school can carry this banner…. Michigan is a good school and I got a good education there," he said, "but the athletic department has ways to get borderline guys in and, when they're in, they steer them to courses in sports communications. They're adulated when they're playing, but when they get out, the people who adulated them won't hire them."

As you can imagine, reaction from the blogger community came swift and in the form of pointy, pointy words: MGoBlog, The M Zone, Michigan Against the world. (BIG hat tip to Michigan Football Saturdays who did all the leg work for my lazy ass).

Well, Michigan took the time to fire back at the Big Ten Conference: Coach Lloyd Carr called the comments "elitist," "arrogant," and "self-serving." Running back Mike Hart had a little less congenial things to say - "That's a guy I have no respect for," Hart said. "You graduate from the University of Michigan, and you're going to talk about your school like that, a great university like we have? To say that we're not true student-athletes? I don't know if maybe he wants to coach here and he's mad because he didn't get a job… He's not a Michigan man. I wish he'd never played here."

Ok then. Don't sugar-coat it Mike, tell us how you really feel. Chad Henne took the high road and called Harbaugh's comments "disappointing." Kinda anti-climactic after Hart's comments.

After reading his comments about Michigan and about USC we at TNL did some covert investigative surveillance at Palo Alto and obtained this secret document: