When Teddy Roosevelt was a young man, he was sickly and asthmatic, prone to devastating coughing fits and forever at the mercy of a body that actively conspired against him leading the kind of active life that he envisioned for himself. Teddy's father, who the kid worshiped, challenged him to mold his body into something formidable and not let his chronic illness define him.
In response, young TR took up boxing and weightlifting and the occasional fast carriage ride accompanied by delicious cigars (to help open up his lungs or some kind of thing, I guess).
Anyway, eventually the asthma went away, as it often does once kids get out of puberty, but Roosevelt kept his lifelong zeal for an active lifestyle. An example of this is how he went blind in his left eye after getting punched in the face during a boxing match in the White House while he was president which is actually a real thing that happened in real life.
Teddy Roosevelt is often held up as the ideal of manliness in presidential form. I mean, sure, a guy like James Madison who was more or less responsible for our entire system of government is pretty cool. But he was also five foot four and didn't personally kill any Spanish people so, you know, screw him.
I bring this up because Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh had this to say on the topic of manliness with HBO Sports' Bryant Gumbel:
[Harbaugh] said he loves the game and touched on a subject he has mentioned several times since arriving at Michigan that he considers football the "last bastion of hope for toughness in America in men."
That's obviously pretty stupid, especially since I feel like working in an emergency room or being a Marine or being a firefighter or making dumb jokes on a blog or being a social worker are all incredibly tough, manly things that are at least on par with getting screamed at by Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh would probably concede that point himself, so I'm not super mad at him for that little bit of hyperbole. Well, a little mad; forgetting the entire military is pretty ridiculous.
But beyond that silly statement, I'm actually way more interested in a dude who at least kind of halfway believes that he can will himself to greater heights (pun absolutely intended). Here's another choice bit from that interview:
Jim Harbaugh said when he was in elementary school he already was thinking about ways to make it to the NFL, where he did eventually have a 14-year career as a quarterback. He set his mind to the fact he needed to be at least 6-foot-2, even though no one in his family had reached 6-feet.
He had heard somewhere that drinking milk makes strong bones.
"Convinced myself that I'll just drink as much milk as I can possibly drink," he said.
In third grade, he had a job at school as a milk distributor and would get one free milk for making the deliveries. And when kids didn't want their milk, he would drink it.
The reason why I enjoy this is because of the mental image of a tiny, third grade sized Jim Harbaugh screaming at kids for their leftover milk, chugging cartons throughout the day as he careened from one classroom to another. Another reason why I enjoy this is because I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that he still does this.
Here is a list of things that Jim Harbaugh also might believe:
- Watching the first hour of "The Longest Day" cures the yips
- Children's television programming, like Sesame Street, is a covert plot by the Marxist Cuban government to encourage the rise of running quarterbacks
- QB transfers from Iowa might somehow improve a team instead of making it worse
- Warning labels on caffeine pills are an attempt by the regulatory nanny state to prevent type A alpha humans such as himself from achieving functional immortality
- That Joe Flacco is a witch
- The five minutes that Alec Baldwin appears in Glengarry Glen Ross are the pinnacle of human artistic achievement
- Humans only require just enough sleep to sustain them through a 14 hour work day and back to back reruns of Star Trek DS9
What I will admit is that as crazy as Harbaugh seems to be, he's also probably the perfect guy for Michigan football at this moment. Since Lloyd Carr, their program has either gone backwards under the direction of a coach who was essentially sabotaged from day one, or stagnated under another coach determined to go back in time to an age where players begged for the chance to be ground up like so much meat into a fine sausage.
I'll be surprised if it's sustainable, though. Urban Meyer and Ohio State fans know better than anyone just how precarious the balance between "intense, passionate coach" and "intense, passionate loner who lives in a shack and writes a manifesto" actually is. Meyer's desire to win at any cost eventually lost him his health and then his job at Florida, and despite his success he's had as head coach of Ohio State, if he hadn't altered his behavior as a person and a dad, he wouldn't be long for Columbus either.
A few days ago, John Harbaugh (the one with a Super Bowl ring) wrote a little ditty about how football is under attack and is the most important institution in America since sliced gerrymandering apple pie jazz contests or whatever. It's pretty predictable: "football is under attack," "football teaches lessons kids don't get elsewhere," "football cures the common cold," "football married my mom after she got divorced and really helped out around the house while she went back to college," etc.
Like a lot of what his brother said, it's a lot of dumb bluster, but it's dumb bluster that they believe, dammit! And like Teddy Roosevelt, maybe at a certain point, if you're driven enough or just plain crazy enough, reality doesn't end up mattering that much. For an individual, an idea or a philosophy doesn't have to be rooted in reality for that person to make it a part of who they are, and even to use it to be successful.
The biggest challenge for Jim Harbaugh right now is not swallowing his own Kool-Aid, it's trying to get the dozens of young men currently under his purview to do the same. His chief rival has proven to be a master at doing that. Time will tell if Harbaugh is up to the task.
