Blake Corum and the rest of Michigan football players have head coach Jim Harbaugh's back. The running back expressed that sentiment on Monday amid the ongoing three-game suspension of the Wolverines mentor.
“A lot of us would run through a wall for [Harbaugh], so it's definitely been tough, and going into the game without him, this is kind of just like adding fuel to the fire,” Corum said on Monday (h/t Tom VanHaaren of ESPN).
While it's been tough emotionally and mentally for Corum and Michigan football players to go on about their business without Harbaugh, they have also learned how to use the suspension as motivational fuel.
“We're going to play — not that we weren't going to play hard at all, but might play a little harder for him and make sure at the end of the game, we give a game ball to him. And you give a game ball to someone, you say you're going to give a game ball to someone, you must win; so we'll make sure we do that for Coach.”
Michigan surely would love to have Harbaugh on the sidelines this coming Saturday when the Wolverines take on the Ohio State Buckeyes in an all-important showdown in Ann Arbor which will determine which team from the Big Ten East division will play in the conference's championship game.
The Wolverines will enter that matchup against the Buckeyes with an immaculate 11-0 record overall (8-0 in the conference). The winner of that meeting will also give its College Football Playoff chances a huge boost.