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Alabama courted Michigan safeties/special teams coach Chris Partridge in the offseason, and for a while it looked like he might leave.
Partridge, one of the Wolverines’ top recruiters, took some time before announcing he’d stay at Michigan.
It was an easier decision than many might have believed, he said Sunday in Ann Arbor.
“I’ve kind of put that to rest, but I guess the biggest thing was I came back for the players,” Partridge said. “I came back because to me it’s like we can do everything we want to do here, win a National Championship. I love the school, the environment, the people I work with. … I could go and move on and coach for another great coach, but I just felt like I didn’t need to make this whole thing a rat race and jump to next job. I see that all over the place in college football. I wanted to just be different.
“There was really no reason [to leave]. It was easy for me to decide to stay. It would have been harder to leave no matter what the job was. The guys I recruited, I have a really good relationship with, and I felt it was better for me to see it out; see if we can come together to do what want to do.”
Head coach Jim Harbaugh hired Partridge out of Paramus (N.J.) Catholic when he arrived at Michigan. That weighed heavily into Partridge’s decision, as well.
“I appreciate Jim,” he said. “I’ve got to be loyal to him. He gave me a shot, and not a lot of people would have given a high school coach a shot. I walked into Jim’s office and said, ‘Coach, you want me to stay?' He said yes. I said, ‘okay, I’m going to be loyal to you.’ That’s a big part of it, too.”
First-year linebackers coach Al Washington said Partridge is as good as advertised on the recruiting trail, probably one of the reasons Alabama was so interested. It was flattering, Patridge admitted, to be considered.
“You’re talking about a team that just won the National Championship,” he said. “Obviously, it’s a shock at first. It would have been the ability to work with another great coach, see another perspective … at the same time I love what’s going on here.”
Enough to re-up with the Wolverines and stick around for what he expects are bigger and better things.
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