Published August 2007:
They are not about to forget Jim Harbaugh for the swipe he took three months ago at his former school.
"He's not a Michigan man," Wolverine running back Mike Hart, right, told Angelique S. Chengelis of the Detroit News. "I wish he had never played here, but it is what it is."
Harbaugh, in his first year as Stanford coach, told the San Francisco Chronicle in May: "Michigan is a good school and I got a good education there, but the athletic department has ways to get borderline guys in, and when they're in, they steer them to courses in sports communications. They're adulated when they're playing, but when they get out, the people who adulated them won't hire them."
Jamie Morris, one of Harbaugh's teammates, used to consider the former quarterback a close friend. Today, they no longer speak.
"We've dissolved our friendship," Morris said.
Morris, who works in the Michigan athletic development department, said he talked to Harbaugh shortly after the comments were printed.
"I said, 'Jim, here's my question for you — do you really believe the comments you said, or are you saying them to make you look good?'
"He said, 'I believe them.' And I said, 'Would you have said it if [former coach] Bo [Schembechler] was alive?' He said, 'That's not the point.' And I said, 'That's exactly the point. You didn't hurt Michigan, you hurt your coach, and you hurt the guys you played with. These are the teammates you turned your back on.' "
Then it became heated.
"We said, 'We're not friends anymore,' " Morris said. " 'You lose my number, I lose yours.' "
And from April 2007 - Note that Pete Carroll didn't leave for the NFL until 2010, just before the investigators showed up on the U$C campus:
Say this about new Stanford football coach Jim Harbaugh: He stands by what he says and doesn't back down from anyone. That includes the bullies of the Pacific-10 Conference, the USC Trojans.
Harbaugh got into a little hot water late last week when he told CBS SportsLine.com that he heard USC Coach Pete Carroll was leaving the school after next season.
But rather than claim he was misquoted, Harbaugh has said in subsequent interviews that he was only repeating what he heard.
"It's been widely publicized that he has interviewed for other jobs, and that is what I've heard," Harbaugh said Monday. "I definitely said that. But we bow to no man. We bow to no program here at Stanford University."
Harbaugh was talking about the importance of having a stable coaching staff when he made his initial comments about Carroll. He pointed out that Carroll has had a lengthy stay at USC, but added, "He's only got one more year, though. He'll be there one more year. That's what I've heard. I heard it (from) inside the staff."
Naturally, the comments didn't sit well with the man who returned USC to national prominence. "If he's going to make statements like that, he ought to get his information right," Carroll told the Los Angeles Times. "And if he has any questions about it, he should call me."
Monday, Harbaugh said, "I gave Pete Carroll a compliment, really. He's created a great program at USC and, you know, I said what I've heard, that he won't be there past next year.
I don't claim to be the definitive source on what Pete Carroll is going to do next year."
Asked if he had touched base with Carroll to clear the air, Harbaugh said, "I don't have any questions about his future."
Harbaugh is a prick...a massive prick, and I hope he shows up in Ann Arbor and fails miserably. I have a good buddy who played hockey at Michigan at the same time as Harbaugh, and he has nothing good to say about this prick. He often said he was surprised he could even enter a classroom because his head was too big to get through the door.
He will quickly become more hated than urban legend myer at tOSU.