As you have heard by now (a million times), Jim Harbaugh, after enduring a nine-hour interview with the Minnesota Vikings, is remaining the head football coach at the University of Michigan.
On Thursday night, Harbaugh did an exclusive interview with Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press and Harbaugh admitted that the Vikings weren’t as enthusiastic about him as he was about them.
From Detroit Free Press:
“In a nutshell, I love Michigan,” he explained in a phone call to me Thursday evening. “I love every player. I love every family.”
Then why, he was asked, had he flown to Minneapolis to interview for the head coaching job with the Vikings?
“There was a tugging at me that I was once that close to a Super Bowl and I didn’t get it. Some NFL jobs came open. I was contacted by the (Minnesota) Vikings.
“For better or for worse, it was something I wanted to explore. I went in thinking, ‘I’m gonna have 100 percent conviction on this, and if they (Minnesota) have 100 percent conviction on this, then it’s something I’m gonna do.
”But like many a job interview, somewhere in the process, he got a sinking feeling. It was all good. “A first-class operation,” he said. “First-class people.” But there wasn’t an equal match of enthusiasm. And for a man whose catch phrase is “an enthusiasm unknown to mankind” — well, that stuff matters.
Well, there ya have it. Straight from the horse’s mouth.
