9/7/2020 football Edit

'The Team, The Team, The Team' — Jack Harbaugh Advises U-M To Stay Together

Austin Fox • Maize&BlueReview

Staff Writer

Both Michigan Wolverines football coach Jim Harbaugh and his father, Jack, attended a protest that took place in Ann Arbor on Saturday afternoon, with the goal being to put more pressure on the Big Ten to reverse their fall cancellation decision.

Jim Harbaugh never addressed the crowd during the event, but Jack Harbaugh did toward the conclusion at Chris Hutchinson's (the father of current Michigan junior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson) request.

The protest began outside the Michigan Stadium tunnel, with the attendees then making their way to Hoover Street, State Street and then finally to the U-M Diag in the campus' central location.

This is where Jack Harbaugh addressed the crowd, on what happened to be the same day the Wolverines were originally slated to kick off their 2020 campaign at Washington.

“What an exciting day," Harbaugh exclaimed to begin his speech. "Just think what it could have been had they allowed us to play. This would have been kickoff time. In that locker room looking around with sweat beads coming off your forehead, looking at each other knowing you were going to have the chance to play the greatest game in America!

“Stay together! Stay together as a team! As [longtime Michigan football coach] Bo [Schembechler] said back in the ‘70s, 'The team, the team, the team.' Stay together and we’ll come out together, and we’ll get this thing taken care of sometime this year.

"GO BLUE!”

Jack Harbaugh served as Schembechler's defensive backs coach at Michigan from 1973-79, a span in which the Wolverines compiled an incredible 66-13-3 record, while winning the Big Ten title in five of those seven seasons.

The famous lines Harbaugh cited above were from the iconic 'The Team, The Team, The Team' speech Schembechler gave to his Michigan football squad in 1983, which are as follows:

"We want the Big Ten championship and we're going to win it as a team. They can throw out all those great backs, and great quarterbacks, and great defensive players throughout the country and in this conference, but there's going be one team that's going to play solely as a team.

"No man is more important than the team. No coach is more important than the team. The team, the team, the team! And if we think that way, all of us, everything that you do, you take into consideration what effect does it have on my team?

"Because you can go into professional football, you can go anywhere you want to play after you leave here. You will never play for a team again. You'll play for a contract. You'll play for this, you'll play for that.

"You'll play for everything except the team, and think what a great thing it is to be a part of something that is, the team. We're going to win it. We're going to win the championship again because we're going to play as team better than anybody else in this conference — we're going to play together as a team.

"We're going to believe in each other, we're not going to criticize each other, we're not going to talk about each other, we're going to encourage each other! And when we play as a team, when the old season is over, you and I know, it's going to be Michigan again, Michigan!"

Another iconic term Schembechler coined during his time at Michigan was 'Those who Stay Will be Champions,' which rang true throughout his entire 21-year tenure (1969-89) in Ann Arbor.

From 1969-89, every Michigan player who stayed at least four years on campus won a minimum of one Big Ten championship, with Schembechler's successors — Gary Moeller (1990-94) and Lloyd Carr (1995-07) — continuing that success as well.

Moeller won three league titles during his five years on the job, while Carr won five in his 13 years at the helm. To further exemplify Michigan's reign of excellence throughout the Schembechler, Moeller and Carr eras from 1969-2007, consider this: the Wolverines' longest Big Ten title drought during that span was just four years, occurring from 1993-96 (was snapped with both a league title and a national championship in 1997).

The four-year title drought during the 39-year stretch from 1969-2007 was the only one of its kind.

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