Ed Puskas: Harbaugh just what Michigan needs

It appears the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry is about to get a lot more interesting.

Even as the Buckeyes’ team plane was landing in New Orleans on Saturday, the Wolverines — who packed away their gear weeks ago and sent Brady Hoke packing at roughly the same time — seemed on the verge of making news.

Jim Harbaugh might be headed back to Ann Arbor, where he played quarterback for Bo Schembechler fron 1982-86.

So much for not hiring a Michigan man.

The Wolverines’ list of possible replacements for Hoke couldn’t have been too long. It was always going to be Harbaugh or Les Miles. At least that’s who Michigan had targeted. And when Miles made it clear he wasn’t leaving LSU, Harbaugh became the guy the Wolverines had to have.

Forget about his reputation as a coach who eventually makes everyone around him uncomfortable. Michigan’s football program is full of guys who’ve become too comfortable with mediocrity. The Wolverines haven’t been relevant in the Big Ten Conference since Nov. 18, 2006.

That was the day Michigan and Ohio State — both unbeaten — met at Ohio Stadium in the de facto Big Ten title game just one day after Schembechler collapsed and died.

The top-ranked Buckeyes didn’t let the second-ranked Wolverines win one for Bo, escaping with a 42-39 victory to secure a berth in the BCS Championship against Florida.

No need to re-hash that game. This is about Michigan’s journey into darkness and perhaps — finally — back to the light of national relevance.

Related thought: Was it really as recent as late 2006 that the nation’s top two teams were from the Big Ten? Those whose allegiances belong to the SEC would have you believe it was more like 1966.

But back to the Wolverines, who made a mistake when Lloyd Carr’s retired after the 2007 season. That mistake was named Rich Rodriguez, who lasted just three seasons in Ann Arbor after trying to turn Michigan into a small and quick read-option team.

Rodriguez accomplished part of that. The Wolverines became smaller — physically and in terms of their reputation — on his watch. That unwelcome change left them unable to match up against some of their own rivals on both sides of the ball. Rodriguez was all but chased out of Ann Arbor with torches and pitchforks.

Hoke replaced him and got more out of Rodriguez’s recruits than he had, but only for a year. After Michigan went 11-2 in 2011 — including a narrow win over an Ohio State team decimated by scandal — Hoke’s teams declined markedly in each of the next three years.

Hoke was a dead man walking by the time Ohio State and Michigan met this past November in Columbus. If anything, the firing was at least a year too late.

Do the math. Aside from 2011, the Wolverines’ last win against the Buckeyes came in 2003. Why did Michigan let its football program deteriorate for so long?

As enjoyable as the 2001-2014 stretch has been for Ohio State fans, something has been missing. First Jim Tressel and now Urban Meyer haved owned Michigan.

But for the first time since Schembechler and Hayes waged The Ten-Year War, the Wolverines might have a coach to match their rival.

Harbaugh can be abrasive, but he’s a winner.

Isn’t that what people said about Meyer? Harbaugh is precisely what Michigan needs. Another Ten-Year War might be on the way.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.