re: Colin Cowherd: The greatest coach in the history of football…Jim Harbaugh.

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He was great at exploiting any and every loophole to give himself a competitive advantage and getting all (players, boosters, school admin) to fall in line.

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Yeah...no other program had boosters paying their players pre-NIL. Everyone else was completely honest and above board, except Saban and Alabama.

If you spinned a wheel on a random high school, college, or NFL team and had to pick a coach beforehand to make that team as successful as possible, Harbaugh would be a good choice.

I think he’s a better X’s and O’s guy than coaches like Pete Carroll and Jimmy Johnson. He’s also an offensive guy and technical expertise is more important on that side of the ball. He also doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, and I could see him coaching a rural high school team with 25 players and having the patience and adaptability to make them better.

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Why isn’t Jimmy Johnson the best ever? He won championships at both the college and the NFL level.

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So did Pete Carroll and he was arguably the last dynasty pre Saban

Cowherd is the most west coast biased guy in sports media though. Harbaugh having 4 coaching stints in California is the only reason he's saying this

That’s not what I said or implied idiot

Saban was just always a step ahead of most when it came to these things and Bama gave him an unlimited budget to do so.

You can have a shadow staff

Saban: ok I’ll have a team of 50 of them
Bama: sure we’ll cut the check

Ir was the perfect marriage.

That’s not taking a shot at Saban, there were tons of knockoffs that tried to imitate and fell flat on their face.

If you’re talking about success in college and the pros, the answer is Jimmy Johnson. Hell, you could even make a case for Pete Carroll over Jim Harbaugh.

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Really 0 argument to support this

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I’m not necessarily saying Harbaugh is the best, but there’s more to it than just accomplishments.

Barry Switzer inherited a team that won the last two Super Bowls (and a damn good OU program too). Johnson inherited a national championship college team and should have done better than one national title from 1984-1988. And while Johnson deserves all the credit in the world for the Dallas turnaround, that was a unique situation with the Walker trade and a HOF QB sitting at #1 in the draft. It’s not a blueprint for everywhere and he didn’t really improve the Dolphins in his next stint. Pete Carroll was fired in NE and NYJ.

And while it would be good for Harbaugh’s case to win a SB, he has literally won significantly everywhere and never inherited a program built by someone else.

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By his own criteria Pete Carroll is better than Harbaugh

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By his own history you'd think it would be Carroll who Cowher used to love but since Michigan winning he's been all Harbaugh.

USC was worse than Michigan when Carroll took over, as USC was the only Pac-10 football team to never finish in the national top 10 during the previous decade.

Pete Carroll:

College:

In 2001, Pete Carroll's first USC team started with a 2–5 record but his teams then went 67–7 over the next 74 games.

2 AP National Titles,
2 BCS Championship games, 1 BCS Title
6 BCS Bowl victories
7 consecutive AP top 4 finishes
National-record 33 consecutive weeks as the Associated Press's No. 1-ranked team,
A winning record of 97–19 (83.6%)
34 game unbeaten streak
35 game unbeaten streak at home (ended by Harbaugh and Stanford)

NFL:

10 playoff appearances, 6 Division championships, 2 Conference championships, 1 Super Bowl championship.

Harbaugh is a very high-floor coach wherever he goes. He'll turn around bad programs and make them very good, and he'll rarely, if ever, have a disaster season once he's been there a few years. He made a Super Bowl and won a title in college. He's an elite football coach. There are lots of arguments for who should be in the top 3/5, but it's not outlandish to say Harbaugh is in that conversation.