Around this time of year, Michigan fans have their fingers and toes crossed that Wolverines head football coach Jim Harbaugh will stay with the school. Although reports are making their rounds that Harbaugh is meeting with the Los Angeles Chargers, there is no word yet, leaving the Maize and Blue nation on pins and needles.
After all, who’s got it better than the Harbaughs?
Now that the confetti has cleared from the CFP championship game, we can look back at Michigan’s meteoric undefeated season and championship win, can we talk about the Buffs? Since 2022, the team has worn “Turnover Buffs” the high-end Cartier eyewear which features buffalo horn arms known colloquially as “Buffs,” as their signature gaudy sports item whenever there was a turnover.
If Miami has the “U” chain, in Michigan they rock Cartier and more specifically “Buffs.” The brainchild of Michigan cornerback Will Johnson, he utilized his NIL relationship with a jeweler, Ziedman’s Jewelry and Loan, to get the Buffs and the team started making it a staple item of their game.
After Michigan defeated Washington, Harbaugh was handed a pair of “White Buffs” on the field and he then switched over to the “wire” which are Cartiers that have wire arms versus the more opulent buffalo horn. Then there are “Woods” which are a combination of wood and wires usually accompanied with gold rims around the lens. The terms comes from Detroit and is a staple wardrobe item for a Midwest baller. Harbaugh joined in on the team’s fun which unites the state as urban centers like Detroit neighbors, only a 40-minute drive from the campus at Ann Arbor, had to feel that one.
With prices in the high $2000s for Buffs, high $1000s for Wires and more for wood-wire combinations, the Michigan flex is akin to the Shedeur watch-in-your-face moment. The biggest difference is Michigan is undefeated.
As an avid wearer of Cartier glasses myself, I salute Harbaugh for not only throwing on the White Buffs, which are also synonymous with the streets in Detroit, but also for showing his versatility within Cartier eyewear culture by switching up with the understated Wires on the winning stage.
However, there were so many Harbaugh-isms during that night we have to list them.
Confetti Wasted
“It’s pretty great. You watch this confetti come down, it’s like thousands of confetti. It tells a story. There’s a story in every one of those pieces of confetti. Amazing blue confetti. Just so proud of our team,” Harbaugh said to ESPN’s Holly Rowe.
The 60-year-old coach caught hell from the Michigan faithful, who conjured up hilarious posts roasting his lack of poetic symmetry.
“personally i do not think there is a story in every piece of confetti but I did not go 15-0 and win the national championship myself,” posted @tapemachines on ‘X.’
Others chipped in for Harbaugh to leave the poetry to the poets but, in general were ecstatic that Harbaugh broke an almost three-decade championship drought.
Tattoo Jimmy
Harbaugh also announced that he willingly lost a bet with the team that if they went 15-0, he would get a tattoo that said 15-0. He said he will get it on his right arm, his quarterback arm, along with the Michigan “M” which also signifies the over 1,000 wins they achieved.
His Parents Are Struggle OG’s
Harbaugh penned an essay for The Player’s Tribune back in 1996 on his early life growing up in Ann Arbor. In the personal passage, Harbaugh talks about how his father’s favorite phrase to lighten up bad financial days was, “Who’s got it better than us?” and the response from the Harbaugh boys was always “nobody!”
Jack Harbaugh, the patriarch of the coaching family, won the first championship among himself and his sons when he led Western Kentucky to the I-AA championship in 2002. Next up was John Harbaugh, who led the Baltimore Ravens to their Super Bowl 47 win.
Now Jim joins the ranks of the Harbaugh championship legacy, and he let his father, who worked for a then low-paying coach/recruiter salary, yell out his motivational phrase on the biggest stage in college sports.
That’s epic.
He even made college football pundit Paul Finebaum eat his words.
“I was cheering for him last night, and I can’t explain it,” Finebaum said on ESPN. “I’m sure it goes back to some weird thing from when I was a baby. I don’t know if I’ve ever been more wrong about anything in my entire life.”
From confetti to Buffs, Jim Harbaugh is not just a coach; whether he’s aware or unaware, he has some energy for the culture.
