One of college football’s biggest stories so far this offseason revolves around the future of Michigan Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh.
Harbaugh, who led Michigan to its first national championship in a quarter-century when the Wolverines knocked off the Washington Huskies 34-13 in the College Football Playoff National Championship on January 8, has been contemplating his future and whether he would rather stay at Michigan or make a return to the NFL, presumably as head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers.
ESPN’s Rece Davis interviewed Harbaugh shortly after the victory, and while the topic of Harbaugh’s future came up, the coach mostly dodged it and talked about just living in the present and enjoying the moment.
On The College GameDay Podcast this week, which Davis co-hosts with fellow ESPNer Pete Thamel, he addressed the interview and his regrets over not asking a follow-up question.
“It wasn’t like he walked in there going, ‘I’ve done my job, and now I can’t wait to get back to the NFL,’” Davis said, via Jordan Bondurant of Barrett Sports Media. “He was pretty much quintessential Harbaugh in terms of the way he answered it.”
The struggle that Davis dealt with is he knew Harbaugh wouldn’t answer the question if he asked him directly if he planned to leave Michigan. So Davis would have to get creative, something that simply didn’t come to him in the moment, but came to him after the interview.
“There’s always a question that you left on the table, and this was just a miss by me. I thought of the follow-up question that I missed, and I regret, ‘What would it take to get you to leave Michigan?” Davis added. “That’s a pretty basic question that I missed, and I wish I had asked it that way.”
Davis noted that while he wouldn’t expect Harbaugh to answer that, either, he still should have asked.
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