Harbaugh Weighs In On 'Intense' Rudock, Morris Competition, Life At Camp, And 'Saved By The Bell'
By Christy Strawser
DETROIT (CBS Detroit) The University of Michigan football team and its coach Jim Harbaugh emerged Thursday from their proverbial submarine, blinking into the spotlight.
Harbaugh continued to face the media glare Friday, calling into the Stoney and Bill with Sara show on 97.1 The Ticket to talk about what he was doing all those weeks when he and his team were in a cone of silence.
"We had like team building and cool activities, we did football," Harbaugh said on the show. "The meetings, practices, meals, etc., they did stay in the dorms and enjoyed each other's company in a football way. It was good work. I can't recall being part of a camp where the players were asked to do more work and did that work and did it with a tremendous focus. It was a good experience."
Harbaugh's intensity is famous and word coming out of this camp is the players practiced for sometimes 15 hours a day, spanning early mornings and evenings, with an ever-changing schedule. There were no cushy hotels, no VIP service.
"That's football," Harbaugh explained. "There's not a lot of people who enjoy camp, fall camp in football. In a lot of ways that is the way it should be. If you do enjoy it, there's probably a pretty good chance you're not going to be any good. It was good experience and now we're in game week for Utah, a big game week."
He added: "That's been football since the inception of the game, since they were wearing leather helmets and numerals went on the jerseys. That's fall camp, it used it be known as two-a-days, it's football as we know it, as we've always known it."
After all that work, the unknown entity is how the team actually looks on the field against another team.
"I'm looking forward to seeing it as well," he said. "My favorite thing as a coach is to watch the fellows compete. In college football in particular, it is the one sport that doesn't have a pre-season."
Many predict the starting quarterback when Michigan takes on Utah next Thursday night will be Jake Rudock, not Shane Morris, but Harbaugh won't say who fans will see on game day.
"The biggest strength for both Shane Morris and Jake Rudock is just how important it is to them," Harbaugh said. "Both of them have come in and competed at a high level. It's been an intense competition. They have the respect of their teammates because they have done that."
But he's not naming the starter or saying if both will play in the opener. Harbaugh seemed to say keeping details under wraps makes opponents prepare for more eventualities, which gives his team an edge. He plans to introduce a depth chart Monday for the game against Utah, which stormed past Michigan 26-10 last season on its way to a 9-4 record.
Harbaugh's return to his hometown has sports writers across the country apoplectic with glee, and on a personal note he said he takes pride in the fact his kids go to the schools he went to growing up. He has a first grader and another starting pre-kindergarten. "It's just the emotional feeling I felt when I went to St. Francis Elementary School, meeting some of the teachers and the principal, attending mass there, it brought back a lot of memories."
His short-lived acting career also brings back a lot of memories for true Harbaugh fans, especially his appearance on the awesomely bad teen-themed sitcom "Saved By The Bell."
Why did he do that? "The interesting thing is that you think I was good," Harbaugh said, laughing and adding that when he looks back at that particular performance, he doesn't necessarily think it was good.
Harbaugh explained he got a call about the show and it went like this. "It was back in the mid-1990s and one of those calls that you get where (it's) 'Would you like to be on Saved By The Bell?' Sure.'"
Is he a fan of Dustin Diamond, the nerdy Screech? "Who isn't?" Harbaugh said.
On the celebrity front, Harbaugh recently answered a call from Michael Jordan. He said he was in the car with his wife when the phone rang, so he got to earn some point with her about his sports celebrity clout.
"The call was pretty great, the timing could not have been any better for me," he said laughing.
