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Jim Harbaugh is entitled to his opinion.
But for the first time since he took over as Michigan’s head coach at the end of 2014, it’s easy to question him.
From his Twitter account to out-of-the-box hires, it hasn’t been hard for Harbaugh to stay in the news since returning to Ann Arbor. Harbaugh was at it again on Monday, unintentionally creating headlines when he appeared in a segment on Fox 2 in Detroit with reporter—and former Michigan cheerleader—Charlie LeDuff.
After some talk about why the former Wolverines quarterback opted to return to his alma mater as the head coach, the direction of the conversation turned toward Harbaugh’s salary.
After initial reports that he would make $ 8 million per season with Michigan, he ultimately agreed to a seven-year deal worth $ 5 million per year, along with a $ 2 million signing bonus, per NFL.com’s Mike Huguenin.
Is he worth it?
“No,” Harbaugh told LeDuff in the answer that stood out most in the six-plus-minute segment.
“I like making a buck just like the next guy. I’m not doing five times as much work as somebody else or doing more work than someone that’s not the head football coach at the University of Michigan. So to answer your question honestly, I would have to say no.”
That may be the case, but work output doesn’t always equate to a person’s worth.
Compared to other college coaches, Harbaugh’s $ 5 million annual salary places him in a virtual tie with Texas’ Charlie Strong for the fourth-highest-paid coach in the country, and even adding in his signing bonus would still put him behind Alabama’s Nick Saban, who is slated to make $ 7.1 million in 2015.
Of course, Saban has won three national titles with the Crimson Tide, while Harbaugh hasn’t coached in the college ranks since leading Stanford to a 12-1 Orange Bowl-winning season in 2010.
In four seasons, Harbaugh sustained success with the San Francisco 49ers while making the same amount of money he’s making now, per Huguenin. During the same time frame, Michigan struggled under the direction of Brady Hoke.
Yet even as the Wolverines were on the decline, amassing a 31-20 record under Hoke from 2011-14, Michigan football remained profitable.
According to MLive.com, the Wolverines’ football program made $ 82 million in 2012-13. Perhaps even more telling, The Wall Street Journal named Michigan the second-most valuable football program in the country, with an estimated intrinsic value of $ 999,130,000.
At an annual salary of $ 2.8 million, Hoke may have actually been a bargain. But it also begged the question of just how much money Michigan football was leaving on the table.
Just look at Ohio State, which The Wall Street Journal estimated is college football’s only program worth at least a billion dollars ($ 1,127,580,000, to be exact). Just like the Wolverines, the Buckeyes play in the Big Ten and have a big fanbase and rich tradition, but unlike Michigan under Hoke, OSU has been winning in recent years with a big-name head coach.
Carlos Osorio/Associated Press
In hiring Harbaugh, the Wolverines have already accomplished the latter, as no coach in college football has been talked about more this offseason than Michigan’s.
The winning won’t come until this fall—at the earliest—but it’s safe to say the Wolverines are already more valuable under Harbaugh than they were under his predecessor.
An annual base price tag of $ 5 million—and about $ 40 million total—may seem like a bit much for somebody whose job is to coach football games, but it’s actually not uncommon. According to Deadspin, the highest-paid public employee in 39 of the 50 United States is a football or basketball coach.
In some cases, the coaches aren’t worth it, but in many of them, they are. In the case of Michigan, which has proved profitable regardless of results but has yet to reach its ceiling, it’s hard to envision a world where Harbaugh doesn’t prove worth his paycheck.
“I’m willing to work for it,” Harbaugh said.
It might not even take that much.
Ben Axelrod is Bleacher Report’s Big Ten Lead Writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BenAxelrod. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes were obtained firsthand. All statistics courtesy of CFBStats.com. Recruiting rankings courtesy of 247Sports.
Jim Harbaugh Says He's Not Worth $5M a Year, but Here's Why He Really Is - Bleacher Report
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