Three years ago, Jim Harbaugh was just about done. Harbaugh had rebuilt Stanford into a top-five program, led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl and quickly restored Michigan to respectability.
His Wolverines had come up ever so slightly short of a Big Ten championship (and likely College Football Playoff) bid in 2016, but by the end of 2020, they had lost six of their last eight, and he had to take a pay cut to keep his job.
Surely the end was in sight. Two years ago, Kalen DeBoer was taking on a pretty epic challenge. A three-time NAIA national champion, he had slowly moved up the ladder, from FCS offensive coordinator, to lower-FBS, to higher-FBS.
In his first FBS head-coaching job, at Fresno State, he lost four of his first eight, then won nine of his next 11. Now he was taking on what appeared to be a pretty significant challenge: Restoring Washington's luster.