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You’d be hard-pressed to find many notable names who haven’t been at the center of a joke in The Simpsons over the course of the show’s lengthy run, and now, Jim Harbaugh has firmed up his membership in that particular club.
Anyone who’s kept tabs on Jim Harbaugh over the years knows the current head coach of the Michigan Wolverines football team is a comedy goldmine; an absolute quote machine whose undying love for a sharp pair of khakis is just one of the many quirks that makes him one of the amusing figures in college football.
I don’t know if it would be entirely accurate to label him as “self-aware,” but he has shown he’s willing to poke fun at himself—as evidenced by his fantastic cameo in the criminally underrated (and tragically short-lived) Tim Robinson vehicle Detroiters.
In 2016, Harbaugh got to brag about being name-dropped on The Simpsons for (as far as I know) the first time when he was the but of a joke concerning a “sports genius who everybody hates.” Now, he can add another mention to his résumé with a reference to the scandal that shook the college football world earlier this season.
As you likely know by now, Harbaugh and Michigan whipped up a frenzy after former Wolverines staffer Connor Stallions was caught orchestrating the scheme that involved traveling to other games to steal signs from upcoming opponents in an attempt to give the Wolverines an edge (an operation that led to the head coach serving a three-game suspension, which is kind of wild when you consider how much of a fuss the story initially caused).
It’s only been around two months since the scandal broke, but The Simpsons managed to incorporate it into an episode where Bart was seen teaching a class called “Intro to Cheating 101” inside a building dubbed the “Jim Harbaugh Center for Competitive Imbalance.”
And Bart Simpson is now teaching “Intro to Cheating 101” at the Jim Harbaugh Center for Competitive Imbalance. pic.twitter.com/2rH626QPso
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 25, 2023
Boom roasted.