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Jim Harbaugh is a strange cat.
A nervous bird, if you will.
But it turns out we may have only scraped the surface of determining just how odd the Michigan Wolverines head coach truly is.
Just ask former Alabama Crimson Tide quarterback Greg McElroy, who recently recalled an interaction with Harbaugh that is somehow stranger than fiction.
“A personal anecdote with Jim Harbaugh,” McElroy begins at the 8:37 mark of the above video. I had retired and had gone into broadcasting. And I had gotten to know coach Harbaugh through the draft process and had developed a pretty good relationship with Andrew Luck. Andrew Luck was my roommate at the Manning Passing Academy.
“…I remember seeing (Harbaugh) at the Big Ten media days. This was probably 2015 or 16. I had actually worked Michigan’s camp the summer before. So 13 months earlier I was in Ann Arbor working Michigan’s aerial assault camp as one of the quarterback coaches.
“And Jim Harbaugh approached me at Big Ten media days and said ‘oh Greg, you’re done playing, huh? You’re not playing anymore?’ I said ‘no, coach. I decided to kind of move into this world and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. I love college football, it’s great to be back and working in the world that I’m working in…’
“He basically looked at me as dry and direct as you can possibly be and he said ‘oh, so you don’t love football?’ I’m like ‘no, I love football, coach. I love it. I mean, football is amazing, coach, I work in football. I’m a broadcaster, but I work in football.’…he said ‘no, no, no. You love football if you play football and when you’re done playing and you can no longer play then you coach. And if you don’t coach, then you die.'”
Welp.
There you have it folks.
Play. Coach. Die.
Those are the three phases of life of a football man according to Jim Harbaugh.