OT: Jim Harbaugh

My thought s on that are kind of in the middle. While they never became big winners with him as head coach I give Mike Singletary a lot of the credit for San Frans winning under Harbaugh.Remember he is the one who sent Vernon Davis to the locker room and made him grow up and he put a lot of the pieces in place for that team. And I while I give him props for winning and getting to the Super Bowl he still doesn't have a Super Bowl win. Remember when Parcells made the statement that if he was going to cook he wanted to do the shopping? After he went to where he could shop he never won a title or came close again.

Come on TD dont you know this is a hsbb web site?!
The nerve of you talkin football!

I'm a 49ers fan so yeah, this is of interest to me.  

 

My take is that Harbaugh is probably an a-hole, but lots of super-successful people are a-holes.  Pete Carroll strikes me as one too. But I don't know either, so I can't really say. What I can say is that Harbaugh came within one play of  making the Super Bowl his first year, one play (or one P.I. call, take your pick) of winning it his second year, and one play of winning it again this year (if you believe as I do that the 49ers would have taken the Broncos apart as easily as the Seahawks did).  I'd love to see a different O.C., and I wish Harbaugh managed games better, but whatever his flaws, he's undisputedly one of the best head coaches in the game. 

 

What kind of football team in their right mind gets rid of a guy like that?  While I don't think the Yorks are smart football people, I don't think they're really stupid enough to let him go. But they may be stupid enough to let this kind of story float around during contract talks, and Harbaugh's is coming up. They'll probably do the same with Kaepernick.

 

As for the Parcells angle, yeah, alpha type coaches always seem to want total control, and it never seems to work out for them. Even Jordan needed his Pippen. The 49er suits did a pretty good job assembling talent before Harbaugh came around. He should accept that and try to find a way to get along, IMHO.  

 

The whole story is still fuzzy, and certainly fishy.  Cleveland?  Come on.  Gonna be interesting to see what really happened so far, and how it plays out.

 

PS OMM, Singletary was a great player and is a good man, but he was totally out of his depth has a head coach. 

At my old high school, I followed closely the story of the football coach who was there many years ago. Won back to back state titles and left on bad terms. Turns out he had burned bridges everywhere he had previously been although he had been a winner - also had been a successful baseball coach.

 

1. Once he was hired, he was invited to dinner, play cards, play golf, etc.... socialize with the other coaches and administrators. He turned them down, saying, I'm not here to make friends with anyone.

 

2. Turned the program around, sent kids to D1 football programs, won the state twice, and the program has been a power since he left nearly 20 years ago.

 

3. No one could stand him. Parents, teachers, administrators, even fans. It was routinely said about him. "Yeah, he's an #$@%^&*, but he's our #$@%^&*". Cocky, arrogant, and ran the score up routinely.

 

4. During his last season, two exceptional players graduated who were all state and on their way to a D1. Their numbers were retired and hung in the school lobby. He also attempted to retire his son's jersey, although his son's stats did not meet the requirements for that honor. He hung the jersey in the lobby after hours. When the AD and Principal saw it, they took it down. This was the last straw and he left.