The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/447116
than them? They felt like nobody in the world did. Jack Harbaugh has carried that sense of wonderment and gratefulness throughout his days, passing that message on to his family. The Harbaughs weren't awash in material possessions growing up, but Joani Crean recalled to a San Francisco 49ers blog entitled "49ers" how much fun they had. When John and Jim sprayed water one winter into an open area at the bottom of a big hill, they created their own ice rink in their yard. Crean recalled: "We'd seriously say, 'Who does have it better than you when you have an ice rink in your backyard? Nobody's got it better than you. You have an ice rink in your backyard.' It was fantastic. They'd go out there at night and they'd have the hose out there on it, freezing it up. I think they were playing hockey at that time so they thought, hey, let's put an ice rink up in the backyard. It certainly didn't cost any money, but it was pretty awesome." So it went for the Harbaughs, who came to Ann Arbor in 1973 from Iowa. Jack Harbaugh had signed on as a defensive backs coach for Bo Schembechler, and a love affair with Michigan football was about to begin. "They had such great success when Bo was here, a great win against Ohio State in 1969, now we were becoming secondary coach at the University of Michigan," Jack Harbaugh recalled. "My leader was Bo Schembechler. My heart was pounding then." He admitted it was pounding again, watching Jim at the podium as the newly minted head coach of the football program he'd quarterbacked to greatness in the mid-1980s. Jim Harbaugh himself waxed nostalgic over all that went into a love for Michigan before he ever played a down there. The family arrived in the biting cold of early March 1973. Like nomadic football families do (and this one featured kids of 12, 11 and 4 at the time), they were looking for a new home. They soon found not only a place, but a playground, Michigan's new head coach recalled. "We had nowhere to live," Jim Harbaugh said. "Bo Schembechler told Bob Sutton, who was a graduate assistant at the time, that the Harbaughs were going to move into his apartment, which was in the basement of the golf course. Now this was one heck of a deal, because there was a blizzard that hit Ann Arbor at that time, and the city was shut down. "My brother John and I had the run of the golf course. There was this basement that had putting greens, sand boxes, baseball batting cages, and for three weeks, it was heaven on earth." Who had it better than them? Nooo-body. The love for Michigan only deepened from that point on. Memories included a 11-year-old Harbaugh sitting in a chair he'd one day come back to claim — that of the Michigan head coach. "I can remember thinking about it as a youngster," Jim Harbaugh said. "I was in sitting in Coach Schembechler's office, sitting in his chair, and I had my