Harbaugh Tales: Part One

Jim Harbaugh hasn’t hidden his outgoing and flat out peculiar personality in his first 20 months on the job as Michigan head coach. He has made headlines going shirtless at a satellite camp, climbing a tree on a recruiting trip, and walking out of a media session abruptly. His personality has its ups and downs, but fans only get to see Harbaugh strutting the sidelines on Saturdays.

MGoFish has received several outlandish stories from recruits, parents, and MGoFish’s own, Evan Paputa, and selected the top five favorite Harbaugh stories that no one has ever heard. There’s one catch: there will be six stories total, meaning one of them is completely made up. To make it fun, tweet @MGoFish and vote in both the poll below and the Twitter poll to guess which of the six stories is a fake.

Check out the first series of Harbaugh Tales:

Tale #1: “When I visited for the Ohio State game, we were in the eating area in the stadium and Coach Harbaugh had two big slices of pizza in his hand. I walked up to him and we had a conversation. He was going in on that pizza like he hadn’t eaten in years. When I asked him for a picture, he just stuffed both pieces of pizza in his mouth and smiled like everything was just fine.”

Tale #2: “Coach Harbaugh and I were talking on the phone and he was telling me how a mother deer gave birth to a baby deer in his front yard and his kids got attached to the baby deer and they were playing with it but the baby deer’s mother came back for it after a couple of hours.”

Tale #3: “Jim Harbaugh was in the middle of his satellite camp journey in June of 2016 and in Detroit at Sound Mind Sound Body. On his way jogging to the auditorium, Harbaugh spotted a water fountain on a wall. Out of nowhere, Harbaugh sprinted to the water fountain and took a 15 second drink before returning to his jog to the auditorium.”

Tale #4: “When Jim Harbaugh and Coach Tyrone Wheatley first came to visit us (parent and recruit), I told Jim that we are Alabama fans and all we say around here is ‘Roll Tide.’ Out of nowhere, Jim responded with ‘Roll Tide.’”

Tale #5: “During one of my visits, Coach Harbaugh was telling me and my parents about Michigan switching to Jordan and Nike. When I asked him a question about Jordan, out of nowhere, he started rapping ‘Jumpman, jumpman, jumpman, them boys up to something.’”

Tale #6: “The first time I met coach Harbaugh and sat down with him in his office, he was talking all about football and school, but the whole time he was flipping a signed baseball bat in his hand that was in his office and used it to point and grabbed it with both hands. It made for a really great conversation and one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with a coach.”