TAMPA, Fla. _ Another year, another coaching carousel, another round of baseless speculation about Jim Harbaugh and the NFL.
National outlets from ESPN to CBS and most in between have, once again, speculated about the University of Michigan's head football coach and vacancies in the National Football League over the past several weeks.
A year ago, Harbaugh called people who speculated about him jumping to the NFL "jive turkeys." On Thursday at an Outback Bowl press conference in Tampa, Harbaugh was asked if he had any reaction to it this time around.
"That's like warmed up oatmeal," Harbaugh said. "(I can compare) it to something else. When it's rehashed or warmed up, it's not good anymore. Oatmeal. That's the first thing that comes to mind.
"I'm not a big fan of warmed up oatmeal."
A year ago, during Michigan's team banquet, Harbaugh told the crowd that any rumors about him moving on to the NFL were created by Michigan's "enemies" as a way to hurt the program during recruiting.
Whether those enemies exist in the coaching world or the media professions is anyone's guess.
"A lot of this talk is coming from our enemies," he said last December. "From coaches who, and you know the names. You probably know the names of the top three that I'm referring to. They like to say (I'm leaving) to the media, they like to tell that to recruits and their families to try to manipulate them into going to another school besides Michigan.
"But we know them as jive turkeys."
Michigan is about to wrap up Harbaugh's third season in charge of the program in the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1 against South Carolina (noon, ESPN).
As has been the case in each of his first two bowls at Michigan, Harbaugh has members of his family with him throughout the week here in Tampa.
Well, his immediate family.
His extended family, his football team, is also here.
"It's just fun being together, that's what we like. We like being together as a football team, working on football," Harbaugh added. "Eating good food, staying in a great hotel. Practicing on great practice fields, weight room is really good. We're like a pig in slop right now.
"Our families will start coming down over the next couple days. That'll increase the goodness of everything. We've got the ball game we're looking forward to. Just steaming toward that. All good. It's all good, man."
