remaking of the Michigan football program began in, of all places, Columbus, Ohio.
Interim athletic director Jim Hackett, on the job just under a month, was in the area for the Michigan-Ohio State football game Nov. 29 and arrived a few days earlier to visit relatives.
Instead of engaging his family and friends, he spent significant time alone, eventually deciding to fire then-coach Brady Hoke, ending what he called the era of experimentation.
"What did the institution need?" Hackett said Friday in an extended interview on the "Huge Show" radio program. "I came away thinking, it can't afford to experiment more. If you look at the last seven years starting with Rich Rod's arrival – Brady had a good year in there, but there was a seven-year period where it felt like these were experiments, we weren't sure were going to turn out. So there was a gradual decay of 'something' because of that. You can call that fan support, you can call that winning, you can call it enthusiasm for Michigan's history. This is the winningest program ever in this sport and it carried the day for a long time. It certainly wasn't behaving that way now, though.
"The final junction of this weekend, that Sunday night I called the president (Mark Schlissel) and told him that I don't think we can experiment anymore. That's the thing that led me to thinking about the next candidate. If there's someone at an upstart program that has great promise and is very young, probably wouldn't cost as much. I didn't think Michigan could take that risk."
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That's where his pursuit of Jim Harbaugh began as he took one of the more unusual approaches to landing a coach, playing on familiarity and loyalty all while trying to retain integrity in a landscape he didn't know.
To many fans, how Hackett got there is irrelevant. All that mattered was Harbaugh, the famous former U-M quarterback who had thrived at three head coaching stops from the Football Championship Subdivision to the NFL, became Michigan's coach.
But for others, the path to landing one of the nation's best coaches at any level was intriguing.
It began with those swim lanes and diagrams that Hackett spoke about when he fired Hoke. He set up huge posters, what he called barbell diagrams, with the qualities of the coach he wanted and created a ratings system he put the candidates through.
Harbaugh emerged the closest to his 'X'. He conceded that everyone would say, of course Harbaugh was the best, but Hackett's decades as CEO of Steelcase in Grand Rapids taught him that every situation had to be played out.
"We wanted to come at it the other way and make sure we weren't just talking ourselves into the candidate," he said.
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Yet his first call in pursuit of Harbaugh went in a different direction.
"It was after I handled the Brady situation," Hackett said. "The important thing there was the Harbaugh family. Jim and John's father, Jack, was a coach at Michigan when I was there and I knew Jack. I actually called Jack first and hadn't seen him in years but reminded him who I was, …He was such a wonderfully positive guy. I would talk to him every day. I called him and told him what I was working on and said, before I get in the middle of all of this, whether you think there is any interest from Jim. I said I'm looking at a lot of people, but I don't want to waste a lot of his time and my time. So Jack got back to me and said 'I think it's probably worth you talking to him.' "
That first move set the groundwork for how Hackett would proceed.
According to Hackett's version of the events, everything was a soft sell, a focus on relationships and not the job when talking to Jim Harbaugh. That became the perfect process because Harbaugh didn't want to talk about taking the U-M job when he was still coaching the San Francisco 49ers.
"That started a series of phone calls (with Jim) that never really talked about -- funny thing now that I thought about it -- 'Do you want to come as a coach at Michigan?' " Hackett said. "We started talking more about those barbell diagrams and what it took to win today and what had happened to the Michigan program in the last seven years. The one thing about coaches, they're not going to criticize each other."
Hackett understood and appreciated that the Harbaughs were concerned that Hoke was treated fairly in the evaluation and dismissal process, because it spoke to them not wanting to loom over his demise.
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"(Jim) was willing to consider Michigan if he could get comfortable that Brady had been taken care of and wanted to make sure I didn't do something rash," Hackett said. "We started to talk about the program in ways. Now, as I'm experiencing what he's doing, I'm really glad we started there."
Comparing it to courting his wife, Hackett said, "That's what I wanted. I wanted to know him at a much more intimate level before I took the next step."
There were similar conversations occurring with other candidates, not to string them along but to have a relationship if they became Hackett's choice. This was important given he had not offered or specifically discussed the open job and future with Harbaugh.
Hackett knew that if Harbaugh or the other NFL or candidates coaching in major bowls were restricted by their timeline, he would have to make a decision. With Harbaugh, he figured he would at least need a promise and expectation with his word for U-M to wait through a possible playoff run.
But it was never verbalized to Harbaugh because it didn't have to be. The 49ers were eliminated from playoff contention with a Dec. 14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks and the wheels were quickly in motion.
"The minute we learned the 49ers weren't going to make it, I called their organization and said I would like to talk to him," Hackett said of reaching out to 49ers owner Jed York. "There's a gentleman's decorum in this sport. I like it … Jed said, 'I don't mind if you talk to him, but I'd like to talk to him first.' Once those traps had been cleared, so to speak, I had these discussions about Michigan. I had not talked to Jim about the job. Once I got Jed's OK, then we started more serious negotiations. Up until knowing the playoff (situation), there was no offer, there was no financials. It was just two people."
Hackett began to move in other areas as well.
