Mitch Albom: Jim Harbaugh leaving Michigan football was how fairy tale season was destined to end

Jim Harbaugh walked away from a dream job to take a job he couldn’t stop dreaming about. That’s all there is to say. There was never a doubt in the minds of those who knew him that Harbaugh would eventually return to the NFL, because he is not someone to leave business on the table, and he’s had unfinished NFL business for a long, haunting time.

People forget that in 1996, as quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, Harbaugh had a ball in the air that could have taken his team to the Super Bowl, a Hail Mary on the final play of the AFC championship game that hit a receiver in the chest before dropping to the turf. The Pittsburgh Steelers went on to the Big Game. Harbaugh went home, never to come that close as a player again.

Seventeen years later, this time IN the Super Bowl, Harbaugh, then coaching the San Francisco 49ers, had another ball in the air that could have won it, this one in the final two minutes, when Colin Kaepernick tossed a fourth-down pass a mere 5 yards from the end zone. It landed incomplete. Moments later, Harbaugh watched his brother, John, head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, feted off the field by his players.

Jim, again, went home.

If you don’t think those memories created a permanent campfire in some darkened cave of Harbaugh’s brain, you don’t know the man. And that fire remained lit the entire time he was in Ann Arbor.

This week, he finally acted on it.

As Porky Pig used to declare, that’s all, folks.

He accomplished the mission in Ann Arbor

“The only job you start at the top is digging a hole,” Harbaugh said in a statement released after he accepted the Los Angeles Chargers head coaching position for a reported five-year deal. “We know we’ve got to earn our way. Be better today than yesterday. Be better tomorrow than today.

“My priorities are faith, family and football, and…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mitch-albom-jim-harbaugh-leaving-050013653.html

Author : Detroit Free Press

Publish date : 2024-01-26 05:00:13

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