After Buckeye Nut-Cracking, Michigan's Harbaugh Talks Reverently About Schembechler

DETROIT (CBS Detroit) Coming off what he called a "signature win" for the University of Michigan football team, Coach Jim Harbaugh talked to the Stoney and Bill with Sara morning show on 97.1 The Ticket.

And, of course, the nut-cracking incident came up. A reverent Harbaugh talked with what sounded like almost religious fervor about his experience at an Ann Arbor graveyard where he cracked a buckeye nut at the grave of Bo Schembechler.

It was a pre-Ohio State game ritual. Since 1997 -- the last time U-M won a national football championship -- Wolverines fans have walked through Forest Hills Cemetery in Ann Arbor during Michigan-Ohio State week to visit the graves of famous figures in the rivalry. They include Schembechler, Fielding Yost and Bob Ufer.

This year, Harbaugh made the pilgrimage and added the touch of cracking a buckeye at the grave of his former head coach.

On the show, Harbaugh called it a "powerful" experience. "It was a tremendous walk, the best part was you're with people feeling the same emotions you do ... For the men that were such an impact on the program and all of our lives, just a tremendous feeling of being at Fielding Harris Yost's gravesite. That was the man, the architect, the master plan, who coined the phrase "this Michigan of ours.'

"They says he's at the high point, the high ground of Ann Arbor ..." Harbaugh added, saying Bob Ufer's grave is within 10 feet of Yost's.

Harbaugh said when he's asked where he gets all his enthusiasm, he points to Ufer. "Nobody had more enthusiasm than Bob Ufer did," Harbaugh said. He spoke of his own feelings at Schembechler's funeral nine years ago.

"Outside of my own family, my own father, that would be my coach, Bo Schembechler ... The stick-to-the-plan (guy), and to have a plan and carry it out with an enthusiasm not known to mankind. That was Bo Schembechler."

Does this game against Ohio State, with all its storied rivalry, mean more than others? Harbaugh would only say that the next game is always the most important game. "It's the next game ... That's our mantra, win the next game," Harbaugh said.

At one point in his interview, he digressed into a brief discussion of his dad, saying Mike Stone sounded like his father when he pointed out something negative about the last game. "Every game we've ever been involved with as kids or adults, my dad starts the same way ... What a win, except ..." Harbaugh said, laughing.

He added his team "absolved themselves of all their sins," in the way they won.

On his own growing up years, Harbaugh said "football, football, football" was the only thing on his mind, even as a child, on Thanksgiving.

And this year, he claimed steak will be on his family's Thanksgiving table. Also, creamed corn. "If we could get some creamed corn, that would be one heck of a deal," he said, adding stuffing with sausage and mashed potatoes are also personal holiday favorites.

Michigan takes on Ohio State at 12 p.m. this Saturday.