At a recent press conference, Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh was asked how he was preparing his team for the upcoming games with Penn State and Ohio State.
Harbaugh responded that he coaches them like it's playoff football: If you win, you get to keep playing.
He likened the games to the pick-up basketball games he played at Pattengill Elementary in Ann Arbor.
"The team that won got to play the next game, and if you lost, you had to go to the side and pick a new team," Harbaugh said. "The goal was to play all the way to lunch. I didn't want to miss out on any games."
Harbaugh's competitive spirit is quite apparent today, and it was quite apparent to those kids at Pattengill Elementary too.
Harbaugh had moved to Ann Arbor with his family in 1973 when his dad became an assistant football coach under Bo Schembechler.
One of Harbaugh's classmates recently told a story at the Moth Ann Arbor StorySLAM that could quite possibly be a story about Jim Harbaugh's first experience as a coach.
* The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and distributed by PRX. You can hear it on Michigan Radio every Saturday at noon.
