ANAHEIM — Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh and the top-ranked Wolverines spent Wednesday afternoon at Disneyland following a morning practice preparing for their Rose Bowl matchup against No. 4 Alabama.
The stakes for this edition of “The Granddaddy of Them All” are especially high, as it is a College Football Playoff semifinal game. The winner of Monday’s meeting will play the winner of the Sugar Bowl matchup between No. 2 Washington and No. 3 Texas in the national championship game on Jan. 8 in Houston.
When the Rose Bowl kicks off, Harbaugh will become just the 12th person to play in and be the head coach of a team in the annual game.
“We’ve looked forward to the preparation of what could be an epic game,” Harbaugh said shortly after participating in a Disneyland Parade and arriving at the Main Street Opera House. “We are using every day, hour and minute to get ourselves prepared. I just want to be in a position that on game day we know we did everything we could to get ready for this game.”
He will spend the rest of the week preparing a game plan as he squares off with legendary coaching counterpart Nick Saban and a Crimson Tide squad (12-1) that defeated two-time defending national champion Georgia in the SEC title game. This will be just the second time the coaches have faced each other with the Crimson Tide getting the best of the Wolverines with a 35-16 victory in the 2020 Citrus Bowl.
Saban has won six national championships at Alabama (and another at LSU), but Harbaugh remains in search of his first.
“We’ve been studying Alabama and they’re really good,” Harbaugh said. “So good that they can clear us right out of the stadium but we are good too. We have the ability to do the same to them or the other possibility is that it can be one heck of a football game and that’s the way I think it’s going to go.”
The Wolverines have made three consecutive CFP semifinal appearances but were unsuccessful in their first two attempts to advance to the championship game.
Michigan enters the postseason as the top seed after finishing the season undefeated (13-0 overall, 9-0 Big Ten). Amid their on-field success, the Wolverines have been just as much a topic of conversation throughout the season because Harbaugh missed six games.
Harbaugh sat out his team’s first three nonconference games and the last three Big Ten games before returning for the conference championship game against Iowa.
The first suspension was self-imposed by Michigan amid an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations during the COVID-19 dead period in 2020. The late-season suspension followed the Big Ten’s ruling that Michigan violated its policy by “conducting an impermissible, in-person scouting operation over multiple years, resulting in an unfair competitive advantage that compromised the integrity of competition,” according to a statement by the conference in November.
NFL FUTURE
Michigan quarterback JJ McCarthy is expected to be healthy and ready to play Monday.
The junior admitted to reporters earlier this month that some of his injuries throughout the season were a bit worse than he let on but he said he is feeling “completely fine now and 100% healthy.”
“These are the games you save your body for,” McCarthy said. “I’m excited to (go) all out for this one.”
McCarthy’s future beyond the conclusion of this season remains unknown.
While Harbaugh believes the quarterback is “NFL-ready,” but any talks about McCarthy’s plans will likely come after the season concludes.
“He wanted to wait and play the game,” Harbaugh said. “He has a one-track mind and I love it. Let’s keep doing that because that’s what got us here.”
Harbaugh’s future with the program also remains unknown as his name is frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for NFL coaching vacancies, such as the Chargers.
