As most bowl games regularly change names or corporate sponsors and suffer from a parade of opt-outs, the Rose Bowl remains by far the most prestigious bowl game in college football, and this year it takes on extra meaning. As the host of one of the two College Football Playoff semifinal games, the winner of the Rose Bowl will also punch their ticket to the National Championship Game, which will be played in Houston, Texas. But no matter how things play out in Pasadena on New Year's Day, Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh has already made some impressive history related to the bowl game that legendary college football broadcaster Keith Jackson regularly referred to as “The Granddaddy of Them All.”

With Michigan's appearance in the Rose Bowl, Jim Harbaugh becomes just the twelfth individual to both play in and coach in the Rose Bowl in its one-hundred-plus year history, and an accomplishment of that magnitude is not lost on the controversial Wolverines coach.

“You grow up watching the Rose Bowl New Year's Day,” Harbaugh said, per college football insider Brett McMurphy  There's a couple feet of snow outside and you're like laying on your stomach in front of the TV looking at palm trees, parade and the football game. Halftime we were outside playing football in the snow and then it kind of turns from the day to the night when you watch the Rose Bowl. I know that's why a lot of people in the Midwest probably move to California. You wanted to be there. Got to be there as a player and got to actually be there as a kid because my dad was coaching at Michigan & we went to three straight Rose Bowls. Now here as a coach, it's pretty awesome.”

Aside from Jim Harbaugh, the other eleven men who belong to this exclusive group are Bret Bielema, Rick Neuheisel, Bob Stoops, Terry Donahue, John Robinson, Pete Elliott, Bump Elliott, Tommy Prothro, Chuck Taylor, Jess Hill, and Charles Huntington. Harbaugh's lone appearance as a player came in 1987, when the Michigan Wolverines suffered a 22-15 loss to Arizona State, so against the Alabama Crimson Tide, Harbaugh will hope for a much different result.