ANN ARBOR, MICH. — Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh was the subject of NFL rumors this winter, but there was never any truth to them. He debunked them within days, called out those who started them — other coaches — and proceeded to sign one of the nation’s top recruiting classes.

Linebackers/special teams coach Chris Partridge, one of the key recruiters in many of U-M’s recruiting conquests, said it only made Michigan’s pitch stronger.

“You have to make sure you cut that stuff off and explain it’s not true, and it’s just other coaches that are trying to pull the wool over your eyes,” Partridge said Friday. “Honestly, that helps us more than it hurts us. They’re talking about [Harbaugh] instead of their school. Really? Why don’t they focus on themselves instead of being scared of who we are?

“Seventeen-year-olds take to that — they say, ‘You’re right.’ It turns into a negative against the other schools.”

Harbaugh called the coaches spreading the rumors ‘jive turkeys,’ earning a huge laugh December’s Michigan football bust. Asked who the fowled foes were, Partridge didn’t bite.

“Probably all of them,” he said with a smile.

Partridge was one of the lead recruiters for five-star defensive tackle Aubrey Solomon of Georgia, who signed with Michigan in February. Just getting to know the family was reward enough, he said, but landing Solomon helped him believe even more in his approach.

“When I start meeting and get in a relationship with players, I try to start mentoring them, because I think the recruiting process is kind of broken,” Partridge said. “All these coaches are trying to sell the kids on the program and be all flashy, and they’ve got all these game rooms and all these flashy things and these great meals, and everything is great — well, where’s the mentorship of being a coach? Where does that come in? That’s kind of lost.

“I’ve kind of flipped the script, because what I did as a high school coach, try to mentor them … that’s what I try to do in recruiting. Instead of just selling all the time, what about mentoring them and helping them because they’re high school kids that are going through this monster process and they have issues and they have things that they have advice they need to get?”

He’ll continue to proceed that way, he said, as long as he’s a coach … which figures to be a long, long time.