You have probably heard by now that Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh has hired former Wolverines’ legend Mike Hart to be the team’s new running backs coach.
As soon as the hire was announced, my first thought was that Harbaugh and Hart must have made up after both parties once has some not so nice things to say about each other.
Back in 2007, while Harbaugh was the head coach at Stanford, he took a shot at Michigan, alleging that they steer football players towards easier majors so that they can put more focus on what they do on the field rather than what they do in the classroom.
From MVictors:
“I would use myself as an example,” Harbaugh said. “I came in there, wanted to be a history major, and I was told early on in my freshman year that I shouldn’t be. That it takes too much time. Too much reading. That I shouldn’t be a history major and play football.”
When Hart, who was going into his senior season with the Wolverines, caught wind of Harbaugh’s allegations, the Michigan running back did not hold back, even going as far as saying Harbaugh is “not a Michigan man” and that he wishes “he’d never played” for the Wolverines.
From MVictors:
“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 says we don’t have great student-athletes, but he just accepted one of our transfers,” Hart said. “What kind of sense does that make? Obviously, he wants guys like us at his school. I don’t know how he can say that. He’s not a Michigan man. I wish he’d never played here.”
Something tells me that Harbaugh and Hart had a nice long talk about the past before agreeing to join forces. That, or they both just said, “screw the past, let’s go to work.”