Eric Boggs
For years, Ohio State supporters circled late November on the calendar with one name in mind—Jim Harbaugh—and now the dismantling of his legacy inside the Michigan Wolverines program is unfolding like a slow-motion demolition that Buckeye Nation can’t help but enjoy. Since athletic director Warde Manuel dismissed head coach Sherrone Moore and hired Kyle Whittingham to reset the culture, the new regime has wasted no time scrubbing away the remaining fingerprints of Jim Harbaugh from Schembechler Hall.
The latest wave of departures hit the recruiting and personnel department, with general manager Sean Magee, director of player personnel Albert Karschnia, and director of on-campus recruiting Kayli Johnson all shown the door in moves first reported by Sam Webb of 247sports. The timing is telling. With the roster locked following the transfer portal cycle and signing of the 2026 class, Whittingham clearly waited until the cupboard was stocked before replacing the people who stocked it. Magee, notably, had been credited with orchestrating major recruiting wins such as flipping five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood from the LSU Tigers and helping navigate NIL initiatives, but those accomplishments weren’t enough to survive a regime change designed to sever ties with the past.
Whittingham’s intent is obvious: Michigan isn’t being remodeled, it’s being gutted. One name already rumored as a potential addition is Robert Blechen, a longtime personnel architect from the Utah Utes system who helped assemble that program’s best recruiting class. Bringing in familiar allies rather than retaining holdovers is a classic new-coach maneuver, but in this case it also reinforces the sense that anything associated with Harbaugh is being boxed up and hauled out.
The exodus actually began long before Whittingham arrived. Harbaugh’s defensive brain trust had already scattered across the NFL landscape, with coordinator Jesse Minter leaving to join the Los Angeles Chargers before eventually rising to an NFL head-coaching role, while predecessor Mike Macdonald parlayed his Michigan success into top jobs that included leading the Seattle Seahawks. Add in the earlier dismissal of analyst Connor Stalions amid the sign-stealing scandal and the attrition of assistants to college and pro jobs, and the once-stable Harbaugh machine has already been stripped to its frame.
From an Ohio State perspective, the optics are delicious. For nearly a decade, the rivalry narrative centered on whether the Ohio State Buckeyes could slow Harbaugh’s momentum. Now Michigan is busy erasing him from the building entirely. Entire departments have been replaced, key architects of recruiting success are gone, and the program’s identity is being rewritten by an outsider with no ties to Ann Arbor’s recent glory years.
Whether Whittingham’s overhaul ultimately strengthens Michigan or sends it into a rebuilding spiral remains to be seen, but one thing is already clear: the Harbaugh era isn’t just over—it’s being actively deleted. And in Columbus, that’s the kind of offseason storyline that never gets old.
