The Harbaugh effect: A Big Blue boom, all the way down to the parking lots
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Version 0 of 1. ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The ripples start in a parking lot. The large parking lot at the big high school across the street from the giant stadium reaped between $43,000 and $54,000 for each of the first three home college football games of 2014. For the first three games of 2015, make that $62,000, $65,000 and $59,000. “Isn’t that amazing, how one person can make that much difference?” Judy Solowczuk said. The hiring of one person in American college football can stimulate an entire ecosystem. This cultural, economic and odd human concept might have found its epitome last Dec. 30, when the University of Michigan, with more than 540,000 living alumni, hired a football coach who filled almost too many heartfelt categories to comprehend: former Ann Arbor child, former Michigan football player, former Michigan quarterback, former NFL quarterback, star NFL coach of the San Francisco 49ers. On the football field, Jim Harbaugh already has worked his usual art of deleting inefficiencies, coaching a team that had gone 5-7 last season and 31-20 across four seasons (including a lukewarm 18-14 in the Big Ten) to a 4-1 record and a No. 18 ranking in the Associated Press poll. In the larger ecosystem, his commanding presence boosted season ticket sales to 89,975 (the most since 2012), including 72,076 non-student season ticket sales (the most since 2009) before the season began. While the sustainability of the competitive resurgence is about to face serious tests from No. 13 Northwestern and No. 4 Michigan State the next two weeks, the economic impact will continue for an athletic program with operating revenues of $153.6 million and an apparel deal worth $169 million over the next 15 years. It ripples through a national community in ways that show up small and smallish. [Harbaugh’s return resonates in Ann Arbor] For starters, the high school Harbaugh once attended, Pioneer, can park about 5,000 vehicles on a Michigan home Saturday. Cars cost $50, RVs $250. The money goes to the Ann Arbor public school system, for which Solowczuk serves as executive assistant for finance and operations. Studying her spreadsheet, she spots a $45,000 aggregate increase after three home games — for one parking lot. Solowczuk notes that the 2012 game with Michigan State raked in $144,000, the 2013 game with Ohio State $95,000. With both those rivals visiting Michigan Stadium this season and the Big Ten season churning toward this Saturday’s game unbeaten Northwestern, those numbers appear bound to rise. Down rowdy State Street from the stadium, an hour before a home game against Brigham Young last month, a Michigan graduate named Chris, who asked that only his first name be used, directed cars into his yard. His mother-in-law and father-in-law helped with the car-conducting. Last year, his prices ranged between $15 and $35 but tilted more toward the $15 for non-Big Ten games. His yard did not always fill. This year, it fillsfor $30 — the wee, outer-edge evidence of a sole person’s effect. Beyond State Street, the Harbaugh effect certainly knows no state lines. Last winter, Michigan political science professor Andrei S. Markovits, the Romanian-born author of three books on sports culture, guest-lectured at American University. “What I found so interesting,” he said, “is that when I was in Washington, in all of Rock Creek Park, museums, I always wore my Michigan scarf or hat and it was constantly, ‘Go Blue! Yay!’ . . . And everybody, immediately: ‘What about Harbaugh?’” Markovits continued, citing a greeting from a dean at American: “ ‘Andy, great to have you! Welcome. So, Harbaugh: What’s gonna happen?’ ” The person helping with his photo ID: “ ‘So, you’re from Michigan? So, what do you think Harbaugh will do?’ ” The person helping with the parking sticker asked similarly about Harbaugh. Said Markovits: “Not one of them asked, ‘So, how’s the physics department? What about the political science? You’ve hired a guy from Berkeley. Are you still going to be number three [in political science]? ’” “It was amazing,” he said. “It was just absolutely amazing.” By last dreary Saturday, this power of one had reached College Park, where Michigan shut out Maryland. The stands at Byrd Stadium sported a thick stripe of Michigan colors running up from the field into the top rows, and Wolverines fans’ elevated spirits rang in their casual conversations. Way up in Section 302, in a corner of the stadium vertiginous enough to cause a heaving heart and wary retinas, a Michigan fan somehow avoided a derisive tone while doing a spot-on impersonation of Harbaugh’s predecessor, Brady Hoke, graciously accepting defeat. Everyone in the section knew times had changed. In a parking lot before the game, Matt Cavanaugh, Michigan class of 2003, former Michigan trombonist and drum major, stood on the back of a pickup truck and led a 100-strong throng of tailgaters in a rendition of the fight song (“The Victors”). “It has absolutely been noticeable,” said Erik Ruselowski, class of 2003 and treasurer of the U of M Alumni Club of Washington. The group’s 2,000-plus tickets for the game had vanished in two days. Game-watching crowds in bars had thickened somewhat. Of the raffles the club holds for its scholarship fund, Ruselowski said, “I can tell it’s definitely gone up,” but he couldn’t say how much. In an adjacent parking lot, Scott and Julie Cress of Montgomery County, Md., packed up their car to finish their tailgate and head for Byrd. They met during their second week at Michigan in the 1980s, and Scott pointed out that his Michigan years coincided pretty much with Harbaugh’s as the team’s quarterback (1983-87). Of last season, Scott Cress said, “It was eh.” On Dec. 30, it changed utterly, when Harbaugh appeared at both an introductory news conference and a Michigan basketball game. “My daughter and I were in Ann Arbor, in Crisler Arena, when they brought Jim Harbaugh in,” Cress said. “The place was absolutely electric. . . . The place was vibrating. . . . And a 50-year-old man like me, I’m wearing khakis [the Harbaugh staple] to a basketball game.” Said Julie: “The alumni are totally pumped. The students are totally pumped. I don’t know how they could have picked anybody else.” And the long ripples can filter down through generations. “My daughter’s 13,” Scott Cress said, “and now she’s bleeding blue.” Down at the lower southeastern edge of the country, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale alumni club is enjoying a boom at its watch parties. The club raffles off Michigan shirts, hats, posters — next up, a signed Harbaugh football. “We’ve raised more money this year, at least three or four times the amount of money this year as we have last year,” said Brian Seidenberg, the club president, class of 2005. “The money has been substantially larger than we made in the past.” The chatter rang through parts of the year normally devoid of chatter. Last March, Seidenberg attended the Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce speaking engagement of Tom Garfinkel, the Miami Dolphins president and Michigan graduate. “People were asking if he’s ever dealt with Jim Harbaugh!” Seidenberg said. “Something completely unrelated! People were asking, in the crowd, about his dealings with Harbaugh, which I found amazing.” Of course, the ripple works westward as well, and results in greater crowds at certain bars at 9 a.m. Los Angeles, for one place, brings that entirely different consideration. It’s forever subject to the curvature of the Earth, meaning that every Michigan game since the first one has begun at 9 a.m. That’s as good a time as any to measure impact, and while club president David Golbahar isn’t sure of the numbers in the three designated bars, he said: “It’s improved significantly, absolutely. That’s without question. Toward the end of [last] season, hardly anybody would show up.” At precisely this point last season, after the fifth game, Michigan not only stood 2-3 overall and 0-3 against power-conference teams, it swam in the mirthlessness of hard moral waters. Against Minnesota in the fifth game, after Wolverines quarterback Shane Morris staggered around from a helmet-to-helmet hit, the coaches both kept him in the game for one play and then reinserted him one minute later. Now, as Herb Bowie (Michigan class of 1973) pinpoints, fans can see the return of a specific fan pleasure: the sight of weekly improvement. Since a season-opening 24-17 loss at Utah, Michigan has allowed its four opponents point totals of seven, seven, zero and zero. Club-presiding from the top left corner of the country in Seattle, Bowie notes the effect of a triple change — president, athletic director, coach — and a fresh symbiosis. With Rich Rodriguez, the coach from 2008 to ’10, “There was an immediate immune-system rejection,” owing to his lack of any Michigan background, Bowie said. With Hoke, the former Michigan assistant who coached from 2011 to 2014, “He was not a coach who generated a lot of enthusiasm among fans as far as I could tell,” he said. But with Harbaugh: “Somehow there’s just a chemistry between coach or team and fans that either jells or doesn’t jell, and I think with Harbaugh everything just seems to be jelling.” Some 200 people turned up in far-flung Seattle on Saturday for a Michigan-Maryland viewing, especially given a sponsoring airline’s prize of two tickets to a 2016 Michigan game, but the crowd did not include the president. From one edge of the economic ripples to another, he had flown across the vast land to Maryland. Had Michigan-Maryland occurred in 2014, he said, “There’s a good chance I would not have.” About this series: The hiring of Jim Harbaugh to coach the Michigan football team — the marriage of a highly successful coach, native son and unpredictable personality to a tradition-rich program longing to return to greatness — created a nationwide buzz. Washington Post national college sports reporter Chuck Culpepper will follow the progress of Harbaugh’s first season and its impact on and off the field. More college football coverage: The Harbaugh Effect, Part 1: The anticipation on campus John Feinstein: Terps’ Edsall, Cavs’ London in troubled waters Myles Jack’s injury gives Leonard Fournette a lot to think about Flooding forces South Carolina-LSU game to be moved to Baton Rouge Fancy Stats: The case for Alabama as the nation’s No.1 team Culpepper’s Top 25: TCU’s revenge, and a long snapper’s moment Heisman watch: Buckeyes’ Elliott enters the fray |