Born to coach

2004-06-25 – By Tom Shanahan, San Diego Hall of Champions

Jim Harbaugh lived the good life of the NFL, playing quarterback 15 years and spending another two seasons in 2002 and 2003 as the Oakland Raiders’ quarterbacks coach. His only responsibility, he recently joked, was to “coach three guys, trying to get them to make another million dollars on their next contract go-round.”

That wasn’t fulfilling enough. Harbaugh jumped at the opportunity to take over the program at the University of San Diego, a school that plays far from the limelight of college football, not to mention NFL comforts, as a Division I-AA non-scholarship university.

Even cautions from Raiders owner Al Davis and Raiders player personnel director Mike Lombardi didn’t dissuade him. Harbaugh coveted the job.

“Mr. Davis and Mike Lombardi didn’t think it was the right move,” Harbaugh said. “Mr. Davis thought I could some day be the head coach of the Raiders if I stayed there. I said, ‘Mr. Davis, I’ve followed your career and you coached in college.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but at USC, not USD.’ But since I took the job he has been real helpful and supportive.”

For Harbaugh, who played for the Chargers in 1999-2000 and kept his home in nearby Coronado, the opportunity to return to San Diego as the head coach of a football team was worth more to him than the NFL lifestyle.

“There are a lot of great things about the NFL,” Harbaugh said. “As a player, it’s the highest level of athleticism. As a coach, you can really work at your craft with unlimited time. The draw for me to come to USD is there are other things to do. You’re involved with the lives of 110 players coaching a college team. You’re working with the administration, alumni and parents. There is more of a purpose in your job and your life.”

USD competes in the Pioneer Football League as a West Coast representative of a nine-team conference of academic institutions in the Midwest, East and South. The North and South division champions play for the conference title.

Harbaugh’s vision for USD football is to become a conference power and have the program viewed nationally as “an Ivy League of the West.” He says the school attracts Ivy type of student-athletes and wants to continue to do so. In fact, the Toreros are upgrading their schedule to include back-to-back home games this year with Ivy Leaguers, Penn on Sept. 18 and Princeton on Sept. 25.

Harbaugh’s ambition to become a head coach dates back, he says, to when he was 6-years-old and his father, Jack, was an assistant at Iowa. Jack Harbaugh later coached as an assistant at Michigan, assistant at Stanford, head coach at Western Michigan and head coach at Western Kentucky, where Jack led his team to the 2002 NCAA Division I-AA national title.

Of all those jobs, Jim says his father told him the years he enjoyed the most were the last five or six as a head coach at Western Kentucky.

“Football is football, whether you’re coaching high school, college or pro,” Jim said. “To be involved with coaching as a head coach is what I want. I’m not concerned with what level for my ego. To me, we’re going to coach as if this is a Division I-A-type of program in terms of how meaningful it is to the players. It will have the look and feel and be coached like a D-I-A program.”

Harbaugh ran USD through spring drills for his first experience directing a team before the Toreros return in August for fall camp to prepare for the 2004 season.

He feels he’s prepped for the job long before the two years he spent as a Raiders assistant. As a quarterback, he paid attention to coaches he was under, including Bo Schembechler at Michigan, where he was a three-year starter, Mike Ditka with the Chicago Bears, where he began his pro career as a first-round draft pick in 1987, and other NFL assistants and head coaches.

His last eight years as an NFL player (1994-2001) he was an NCAA-certified unpaid assistant for his father and was involved in recruiting 17 players on Western Kentucky’s national championship team.

“I feel extremely comfortable with this job and know exactly how I want to go about it,” Harbaugh said. “It’s very natural for me. I think there is a lot of carry over from playing quarterback, when you’re a head coach on the field and an extension of the head coach. I watched all the mentors I had to see how they handled a situation. I would wonder what I would do in that situation.”

Harbaugh plans to run the West Coast offense, the same as the Toreros did a year ago but with some variations. That may seem like a departure from his Michigan roots, but he added, grinning, Schembechler would approve of the emphasis on the running game.

Harbaugh named BYU transfer Todd Mortensen (6-4, 225) his starter after Mortensen made the move in July.

In junior running back Evan Harney, a Fallbrook High alum, Harbaugh says the Toreros feature a back “who could play at any level of college football.”

The Toreros return a strong cast of receivers, including Michael Gasperson, a 6-foot-4, 215-pounder who missed last year with a knee injury.

Defensively, Harbaugh says sophomore linebacker Kyson Hawkins, another Fallbrook alum, could emerge as the top defensive player and senior defensive tackle Joe Maietta (6-2, 280) also returns.

Harbaugh’s coaching staff includes Charles Dimry, who played 13 years in the NFL as a cornerback. Dimry has San Diego-area recruiting contacts as an Oceanside High alum and as the head coach the past three seasons at The Bishop’s School in La Jolla.

Harbaugh may have given up the creature comforts of the NFL, but it’s also a job his family--his wife Miah, two sons and a daughter--wanted for him, especially after having lived in San Diego while playing for the Chargers.

“My wife had always dreamed about coming back to San Diego,” Harbaugh said. “She was very helpful and supportive when I interviewed for the job. It’s nice when you know what you want to do and how you want to do it. It’s a blessing to have a job you love and you’re happy to come to work when you pull the car into the parking lot.”