For now, at least, the Chargers’ hire Wednesday of coach Jim Harbaugh stands as a win so big, it’s larger even than the franchise itself.
Start with the NFL, a $19-billion league that excels at playing the long game.
The league loves that a star coach now joins Rams wizard in Sean McVay in the country’s second-largest market. The NFL can view the hire of Harbaugh, who could’ve stayed at Michigan for top dollar, as a reward for the league facilitating the franchise’s move seven years ago to Greater Los Angeles. He’s a nationally relevant coach who gives the Chargers a chance to rival the Dodgers, Lakes, and Rams in Los Angeles.
The Spanoses are big winners, too.
They’d been writing a thin L.A. story, Bright Lights, Big City, Podunk Results.
Zero AFC West titles. Zero home playoff games.
But with the big investment in Harbaugh — an investment that figures to include beefing up the franchise’s infrastructure, a condition of hiring Harbaugh — Chargers chairman Dean Spanos and his son John, the team’s president of football operations, can now join the NFL’s media machine in bragging about the Chargers’ L.A. venture.
See, they or they media proxies can say, L.A. money helps us raise our financial game, while pointing out the club has finished in the NFL’s top half in attendance in the three post-pandemic seasons since its move into the $5.5-billion Kroenke Dome.
For the thousands of diehard Chargers fans in San Diego County who’ve remained faithful to the team despite its mediocre ways, Harbaugh spells HOPE in neon blue-and-gold.
Harbaugh has won big at all four of his head-coaching stops: the University of San Diego, Stanford, the San Francisco 49ers, and at Michigan, directing the latter to its first undisputed national title since 1948, just 16 days ago.
While it would be just like the Chargers to prove the exception, it’s realistic to expect Harbaugh, 60, to lead them to much better results and soon.
It would be a surprise if his first team, gifted with excellent rookie-draft capital and a last-place schedule, didn’t improve on the 5-12 performance this past season under Brandon Staley and interim coach Giff Smith.
Keep in mind, Harbaugh took his second 49ers club to a Super Bowl with a second-year QB, Colin Kaepernick, who didn’t start his first NFL game until Week 11 of his second season.
Literally the biggest winner to Harbaugh’s hire?
Justin Herbert, the 25-year-old, 6-foot-6, 240-pound quarterback entering his fifth NFL season.
In turn, Herbert enticed Harbaugh to leave Michigan. Clearly believing Herbert has the Super Bowl stuff, Herbert took up the Chargers on an opportunity to join Barry Switzer, Jimmy Johnson, and Pete Carroll as the only head coaches to win a Super Bowl and a collegiate national championship.
By enlisting one of the franchise’s former quarterbacks, the Spanoses are going larger than they ever have in a family ownership tenure that began in 1984.
None of their previous coaches had taken a team to the Super Bowl.
And though Marty Schottenheimer had won at a high rate with the Cleveland Browns (.620 over five years) and the Kansas City Chiefs (.634 in 10 years), Harbaugh was a big winner not only with the 49ers (.625, four years) but also with USD (.829, three years) in his first head-coach gig and both Stanford (.580, four years) and Michigan (.781, seven years).
Unlike Chargers Hall of Fame coaches Sid Gillman and Don Coryell, who were hired by previous ownership groups, Harbaugh had a distinguished playing career at the highest level and at the sport’s most important position.
He led the nation in passing efficiency with Michigan’s 1985 team. Quarterbacking the 1995 Colts, en route to the AFC title game, Harbaugh directed a wild-card victory in San Diego over a Bobby Ross-coached Bolts team favored by five points.
Sound, physical play characterized most Harbaugh-coached teams.
Most of his quarterbacks showed good mobility and won games at a high rate.
USD QB Josh Johnson became an NFL prospect whom the Tampa Bay Buccaneers drafted. Johnson, 37, serves as backup with the top-seeded Ravens club coached by Harbaugh’s brother, Jim.
Andrew Luck led Harbaugh’s fourth and final Stanford team to a 12-1 record, and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy oversaw the recent 15-0 season.
A penchant for beating favored rivals defined many of Harbaugh’s teams, although his Super Bowl team lost 34-31 as a 4.5-point favorite against his brother’s Ravens.
Three of his four Stanford clubs defeated a higher-ranked USC club, and his final three Michigan clubs defeated an Ohio State team ranked second.
For San Diego’s schadenfreude crowd that enjoys seeing the Chargers lose, the good times may be less plentiful.
What is the more powerful force — Chargering or a well-resourced Harbaugh operation directed by a top-10 QB? We’re about to find out.
