Written by Anthony Fenech at Detroit Free Press.com
It is 11:30 a.m. and the biggest name in college football has been found.
A Michigan assistant just ran into Jim Harbaugh in the restroom.
“So, he should be around here,” the assistant said.
And inside the Hyatt McCormick Place in Chicago, which is spacious and stretches across a street, full with ballrooms and conference rooms and enough room to hide even the most recognizable of people, “around here” could be anywhere.
There is a room with radio stations broadcasting remotely. Harbaugh is not in there.
There is a room that serves Fox Sports as a makeshift studio. Not there.
A man in a black jacket with a gold, block “M” pinned to his lapel walks by. Harbaugh could be somewhere over there, past a Big Ten sign designating a television broadcast area, a rival coach and some players. There, outside a doorway to the Clark ballroom, is another Michigan man with a pin. And another. Harbaugh has to be in there.
“Our goal is to get better every day,” he says, sitting down for an interview with Sirius XM Radio’s College Football Nation. It is not the last time he will say that today. He talks about improving each and every day and will talk about it again in the media workroom later, standing on a stage in front of hundreds of journalists on Twitter and television cameras focused on the fever that is Jim Harbaugh, which has infected the sport since he returned to U-M in January 2015.
He will say it again sitting on a podium after that, with reporters standing four and five people deep, cameras still centered, offering nonanswers to some questions, good answers to others and on at least one occasion, not taking the bait from an Ohio-based reporter trying to troll him for a sound bite.
Harbaugh was the main attraction at the first of two Big Ten football media days Monday. He has been throughout an off-season that saw him jet across the country for satellite camps and star in rap videos, drawing criticism and jealousy — none that he cares about — and leading him back to Chicago, where he was a longtime quarterback for the Bears, the momentum he has created at U-M evident thorughout the day.
The first thing you notice about Harbaugh on this day is his cap.
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