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You may have heard his latest this week: when telling his football team that rumors of him leaving for the NFL were absurd, he called the whole thing “lies made up by our enemies.” It was distinctly Harbaugh.
This also got me thinking - I think it’s time to go back to the ol’ archives and pull out some of my other favorite Harbaughisms. Why? They’ve all been published before. Still, just like that Christmas tradition that you’ve done a million and one times, this is fun to do 60% of the time, 200% of the time.
So, enjoy.
On Chris Culliver: “He’s got the tools but he’s not a carpenter yet.”
On sweatshirts: “It’s in the rotation. There’s five or six of them that hang there and I grab one each day.”
On receivers getting open: “There was a stretch there last year where (Kaepernick) didn’t have that - and he played through it. And never an excuse, never a bony finger of blame toward anybody. … There was tough sledding at times.”
On cleats: “I’ve been wearing the cleats because we’ve won every time I’ve worn the cleats. There was a time I was superstitious about not being superstitious. Now, I’m suddenly superstitious a little bit.”
On beating the St. Louis Rams: "After a tough loss on the road, they responded – like mighty men."
On his altercation with Jim Schwartz: “I shook his hand too hard. I mean I really went in and it was strong and kind of a slap-grab-handshake. ... So, that was on me.”
On the NFC Championship: “So I anticipate that we’ll have some precipitation, some weather, and that will be a great thing for us.”
On the old lights going out at Candlestick Park: “It was dark.”
On vacations: “I don’t take vacations. I don’t get sick. I don’t observe major holidays. I’m a jackhammer.”
On his musical tastes: “If anybody knows how to reach them, I’d like to reunite my all-time favorite band Hootie & The Blowfish to perform at Stanford this fall.”
On a victory over the Steelers after some more electrical problems: “Honey Badger don’t care about no lights!!”
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After a complicated question from a reporter: “...What are we talking about?”
On birds and worms: “If worms had machine guns then birds would be scared of them.”
On LaMichael James, whose Oregon team beat him at Stanford: “I have a memory like an elephant. ... I never forget.”
On content-to-word ratio: “Sometimes, you get people talking and there’s a lot of low content-to-word ratio. Got to call that out, I guess.”
On player contracts: “Well, until something further changes, which would have to be a principle in my mind that would completely change the way I think, I don’t ever talk about contracts publicly. If that principle changes, I will let you know.”
On facing Pete Carroll and the Seahawks: “Animosity? No. That's erroneous. Erroneous. It's football. It's competition. It's winning."
On staying at Michigan: “God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be right here.”
On ... something: “I think that's just a lot of gobble, gobble turkey. Just gobble, gobble, gobble turkey from jive turkey gobblers. I think that paints a pretty good picture.”
On hearsay: “"What are we talking, hearsay here? Well, in Judge Judy’s court, hearsay is not admissible evidence. I think we can all agree that an unnamed source is hearsay. Would we not?”
On Colin Kaepernick becoming a star: “Yeah, as far as I know he likes to get his picture made, just like I do. That happens quite a bit, wherever he goes.”
On Jeff Fisher commenting about a particular failed play by the 49ers: “The way it turned out, that’s some low hanging fruit – ‘What the heck were they doing?’ Again, you learn from it. It feels like somebody just reached into your chest and stomach and started pulling the innards out without using any anesthesia. But all you can do is learn.”
On the media: “There was no malice in the way our media handled the season, and I appreciate that.”
On talking to the media: “We’re not here today to throw any salvos. There’s not going to be any salvos coming out of the West Coast.”
On Al Davis: “I was a young assistant coach, when I first started coaching, for Mr. Al Davis. And I didn’t understand how profound the statement ‘Just win, baby’ was, even when I was there. I thought I knew, but I didn’t know to the extent that I know now. Just win, baby.”
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On young receivers: “It’s going to get real-real, and it’s going to get real-real real fast for these young guys.”
On getting turnovers: “We’ve been kind of down on getting turnovers and sometimes things just kind of start breaking right for you. Kind of like the olive jar.
“Everybody’s familiar with the olive jar. You open it up and a brand new can of olives and turn it over and no olives come out. They’re packed in there so darn tight, but if you just get one to come out, just pluck one out of there and then they want to come out, they’re just flying out of the jar. So hopefully that’s the case for us defensively.”
On dodging bullets: “Yeah, definitely I was holding my breath a little bit. But he’s a football player making a play, reacting. Dodged a bullet, would be my thought now. I’m glad we did. Dodge bullets. Make plays and dodge bullets.”
On Vernon Davis hurdling defenders: “Did (anyone) tell Michael Jordan not to take off from the free-throw line? I doubt Phil Jackson ever had that conversation. These guys are pro football players. They do what they do. In some cases, they do only what they can do. It’s why we love watching them compete on Sundays.”
On Michael Crabtree catching balls: “People talk about cold weather and it’d be tough to catch balls. But the greatest catcher of all time, Michael Crabtree, catches everything. It’s unbelievable. In the northern snowlands, down to the tropics’ sunny scenes, he’s catching the football. Where they throw a football, he’ll be catching it.”
On a great Paris restaurant: “I’m not a food critic, merely a blunt instrument who only knows football.”
On khakis: “I own other pants. It’s gotten to the point where I save so much time a day knowing that I don't have to stand in front of the closet, trying to decide what outfit to pick out. About 15-20 minutes a day — that adds up day after day.”
On donating khaki pants: “All right, let’s do it. That will free up space in my closet. ... You want me to sign them on the leg? The leg is good.”
On being at Michigan: “I was and still am happier than a pig in slop.”
On winning over his daughters in favor of Michigan: “Anna and Elsa (the characters from Frozen) live there.”
On vitamins: “I truly believe the No. 1 natural steroid is sleep and the No. 2 natural steroid is milk, whole milk, and three would be water,” Harbaugh said on his radio show. “Four would be steak. I take a vitamin every day — it’s called a steak.”
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On his success: “I drank a lot of milk, Andrea. A lot of milk. Whole milk, though. Not the candy-ass two percent or skim milk.”
On football: “I love football. I think (football) is the last bastion of hope for toughness in American men.”
On Ohioans calling him crazy: “I'm not crazy. I wouldn't describe myself as that. I don't know my personality, how relevant that will be in the game this week. Probably irrelevant.”
On playing Florida: “The football gods have provided us heat and sun to shape the body and carve the mind.”
On being at Michigan: “There are no turnarounds at Michigan. This is greatness. Long tradition of it.”
On fans: “Fans have a constitutional right to expect success and have high expectations.”
On America: “In my America, you’re allowed to cross the state borders. That’s the America I know.”
On flipping recruits: “That’s kind of the way the pickle squirted this year. I don’t see that happening going forward.”
On preseason practice: “There’s a battle rhythm, a body clock that tells you it’s time for football. For me, it’s always I know when I get my first football dream. That’s my body clock telling me it’s time to compete. It’s like a bell at a boxing match, ding, ding. The bugler’s call at the Kentucky Derby.”
More on preseason practice: “But, just to let you know, we’re going into submarine tomorrow. You won’t see us for a while. You won’t hear from us. We’re going to be in a bunker mentality until we decide we’re not and we come up to the surface.”
More on Michigan: “I’m not leaving Michigan. I’m not even considering it. A lot of this talk is coming from our enemies, from coaches, you know the names... We know them as jive turkeys.”
On Freddie P. Soft: “He’s a 4-inch (tall) guy that wears a cape and a hat with a plume in it. He’s just tall enough to talk right into your ear and tell you that you don’t have to practice today. ... He’s not a guy you want around.”