Jim Harbaugh is doing just fine. The former San Francisco 49ers coach landed very much on his feet at the University of Michigan, where he is being hailed as a savior. He’s being paid like one, too.
But the wounds remain fresh when talking about about the end of his run with the Niners, a team he guided to three NFC title games and one Super Bowl appearance. The coach opened up about the experience during a call-in appearance on The Tim Kawakami Show, explaining that the split wasn’t as mutual as the team has presented it.
“Yes, I was told I wouldn’t be the coach anymore — and you can call it mutual. I wasn’t going to put the 49ers in a position to have a coach they didn’t want anymore,” he said. “That’s the truth of it. I didn’t leave the 49ers, I felt like the 49er hierarchy left me.”
Harbaugh’s divorce played out over an entire season, with Sunday mornings breeding weekly updates in the media on the disintegration of the relationship between Harbaugh and team brass. Harbaugh was asked if he believed the constant leaks to the press came from the top of the Niners food chain.
“I can’t say that I’ve read everything,” he said. “I have a good idea, I have a pretty good understanding of some of the things that took place and I don’t think we were playing out of the same playbook, but at the end, maybe there will be a book someday. Maybe I’ll write a manuscript. Those are good questions for (Niners CEO Jed York) and the 49er hierarchy and we’ll leave it at that.”
Harbaugh also touched on his relationship with the man who replaced him in San Francisco, Jim Tomsula. Harbaugh left it open when asked if he believed Tomsula was campaigning for his job during the season.
“That’s a good question for him, better than to me,” he said.
Harbaugh didn’t deny that the relationship with Tomsula became awkward as the season wore on.
“There was definitely a point where you walk down the halls and — I wasn’t reading a lot of the things, I wasn’t reading anything that was on the internet, I was really focused on doing my job,” he said. “But definitely walk down the halls and people look away or they’d look at you and you knew something’s going on. That’s really about the extent of the knowledge that I have on it.”
