2015 Interview Of Jim Harbaugh Goes Viral, Proving Once Again How Bizarre The Chargers’ New Head Coach Is

Jim Harbaugh already has the “Weirdest Coach of the Year” award locked up ahead of the NFL’s 2024-25 season (if only that were a real award).

Pretty much any place he’s coached, whether it be his stint with the San Francisco 49ers, or his time in the college ranks with the Michigan Wolverines (which ended with a national championship), Harbaugh has been viewed as an odd fellow. A great football coach, without a doubt… but just a little off.

And it appears as though that’s nothing new, judging by the fact that he used to spend countless hours playing make believe baseball games by himself when he was a kid. Harbaugh happily told a news reporter in an interview that in his younger days, he would sneak away from his home and visit his go-to place for these fictional games. Was it a ball park? Or an open field near his home?

Nope, it was a parking lot.

As you’ll hear him say in the interview below, Jim would tell his dad that he had to go, and that he had to play in a double header. His father, who probably would have been more than happy to play catch with him, always smiled and sent the young Harbaugh on his way. And then Jim would throw a ball against some walls for hours on end.

Now I don’t want to sit here and condemn having an imagination by any means. I’m sure we all had plenty of figurative sports scenarios play out in our respective heydays. A shot in the driveway to win the national championship, or a putt on the practice green to win the Masters. As kids, we all dreamed big… just not in as much detail as Jim Harbaugh.

Check it out:

Whatever makes Jim Harbaugh happy, I suppose. Anyone that can throw a ball against a wall for half of a day clearly has a deep-rooted passion for sports, and one hell of an imagination (and attention span). I’m looking forward to seeing how he does with the Chargers.

And Harbaugh might wish he could go back to his simple, baseball-parking-lot-playing days when he sees that he got hit pretty hard by the NCAA. This punishment, which doesn’t include anything from the sign-stealing fiasco, gives Harbaugh a four-year show-cause and a one-year suspension if he were to return to coach college football.

Good thing Jim has a cushy job with the Los Angeles Chargers now. Those are some serious penalties that Harbaugh faces at the college level… so he’ll probably just never go back to coach at the college level. Man, the NCAA got Jim Harbaugh really good, didn’t they?

This meme just about sums it up: