Ohio State football: Why you can expect TTUN to keep Jim Harbaugh

Ohio State fans should be happy as I believe the khaki Jesus on the sideline in Ann Arbor will remain there after this season.

Why wouldn’t Ohio State fans want Jim Harbaugh to continue coaching Michigan? The guy has yet to win against Ohio State (0-5), hasn’t made a B1G title game yet, and hasn’t developed a quarterback to be anything more than mediocre. You know, the stuff that every Buckeye fan loves to see. But will Michigan fire him? I don’t think so and here is why.

The first reason is money, and that is the biggest boil-down reason for the University of Michigan. Via the Detroit Free Press, the Michigan football program raked in 122.3 million dollars in 2019. Obviously, in 2020 with the COVID-19 effect on college football, that money is down from what it was last year but it kind of puts into perspective the amount of money Harbaugh was bringing into the school.

To compare, Michigan football made almost 62% of ALL University of Michigan athletic revenue in 2019. With Athletic expenses at around 191 million dollars, the school made a profit of nearly seven million dollars.

With COVID creating a big-time loss in terms of revenue, Michigan almost can’t afford to fire Harbaugh, pay the rest of his salary, bring another coach in while paying his salary, and go through a program rebuild where there might be a severe retooling of the program that creates subpar seasons for at least the first couple years of whoever that new coach may be tenure.

Secondly, Michigan football almost certainly can not afford to have another disaster hire among the likes of Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke. Those were some deep dark days for the Michigan program. Rich Rod was perhaps most known for the over-practice of his own players (and also went 15-22 during his time at Michigan).

Meanwhile, Brady Hoke guided Michigan to its best season in years in his first year taking over for Rodriguez in 2011, beating Ohio State for the first time since 2003 and then a Sugar Bowl win over Virginia Tech.

Then the wheels fell off quickly, as he went just 20-18 over his final three seasons while facing criticisms ranging from putting quarterback Shane Morris back into the game with a concussion to refusing to wear a headset on the sideline, claiming they are “overrated” (despite the fact it may be wise to communicate to your coaches up in the press box).

Although Jim Harbaugh has yet to win a B1G title or even beat Ohio State, before this season under him Michigan has won ten games three times in his tenure and never won less than eight, which brings me to my last point.

At this point, is it fair to say Michigan is okay with being a decent program, that just accepts they can’t win big games or beat Ohio State? At this point, there seems to be some traction to that claim. If this is true, it is a remarkable fall from the powerhouse they used to be in the 1990s when they beat up John Cooper and Ohio State consistently.

Or even when they struggled to beat Ohio State in the early 2000s under Lloyd Carr, but the standard was always very high and they remained competitive almost every time with Ohio State. Sure, if they keep Harbaugh they will still win some games, even though this year has been a complete disaster.

They could win eight, nine, maybe even ten games a year with Harbaugh in charge, and I really do believe they will do that consistently with Harbaugh in charge. But the goal of every power five school should be making the College Football Playoff, and with Harbaugh in charge, that won’t happen in Ann Arbor.