Jim Harbaugh is nothing short of the messiah in the eyes of Michigan fans which makes sense given their collective desperation after Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer owned Michigan's program for the better part of 15 years.
After suffering through the second act of the Lloyd Carr era which culminated in six losses in seven games against Jim Tressel, Wolverine fans were introduced to a whole different level of suffering as Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke brought the program to its knees including six more losses in seven games versus Ohio State.
The lone win during the 2008-14 Rodriguez-Hoke era came against Ohio State's worst squad in roughly a million years and Michigan still barely squeaked out a 40-34 victory in the Big House as part of a cumulative 46-42 record including a 24-32 mark in conference play.
With the Buckeyes peeling off a 77-16 overall record during that same 2008-14 period including a 49-9 resume in B1G action and a national championship, things couldn't get much sweeter in Buckeyeland.
At the opposite end of the spectrum and hoping to get the program back to its roots and by extension return to once-familiar winning ways, Michigan announced Jim Harbaugh as its new head coach on December 30, 2014.
From that date on, Harbaugh has mixed sideshow antics with strong recruiting to regenerate a buzz around the program fueled by 20 wins in 24 tries since his return to Ann Arbor.
Despite the program's resurgence however, Saturday's clash with Meyer and Ohio State looms large to Harbaugh's reputation.
So just how important is this weekend's matchup to Harbaugh's legacy as a villain in The Game lore?
As a player, Harbaugh's villainous ways in The Game can't be argued. After he quarterbacked Michigan to a 27-17 win in 1985 including a 77-yard touchdown pass to John Kolesar midway through the 4th quarter, he confidently predicted, in two different interviews, that Michigan would again handle the Buckeyes ahead of the 1986 clash. Sure enough, Harbaugh threw for 261 yards and Michigan dumped the Buckeyes 26-24 after a 45-yard Matt Frantz field goal try failed to split the uprights in the final minute.
As a coach however, Harbaugh's first chance to carve out a legacy in The Game fell flat as Meyer took him behind Michigan Stadium's woodshed in a 42-13 spanking that saw the Buckeyes out rush the Wolverines 369-57.
In fact, his team's performance in The Game was almost as laughable as the countless antics he unveiled in trying to get his program back in the news following the dark days of Rodriguez and Hoke.
Those antics worked from an exposure perspective – Harbaugh was constantly in the public eye – but to many outsiders including Buckeye fans things like The Sleepover, The Signing Day Ric Flair Shit, The Subtweet, The Booger Eaten, The Satellite Camps, The Shirtless Photo, The Khakis and The Busting A Nut on Bo's Grave were all vaudevillian escapades fooling only the foolish. They were nothing more than an extension of the nonsense seen from guys like Mike "H2O-4" Hart and Kyle "There Will Be Blood" Kalis.
For Harbaugh, he'll be Michigan's coach for as long as he wishes no matter what happens on Saturday but if he wants to insert his name, as a coach, among fellow Michigan Men to haunt Ohio State, he'll need to rebound from last year's debacle and beat Meyer on his turf.
Otherwise, it'll just be latest vaudevillian act from a guy in need of actual substance when it comes to coaching in The Game.
