So Jim Harbaugh had an interesting week.
He took his team on a spring break/spring practice road trip to a high school football factory in south Florida, then ripped out the heart of Tennessee coach Butch Jones and showed it to him.
Or, to use a more apt metaphor, Harbaugh ate his lunch.
Memo to Jones and any other coach foolish enough to spar with Harbaugh on Twitter: You can't out-troll the college football world's biggest troll.
As a cherry on top, we learned the Michigan coach and his staff will be returning to the Heart of Dixie for another satellite camp in June, this one at Bob Jones High School in Madison. Hope Coach Khaki got some beach time this week to work on his tan.
In Harbaugh's continuing crusade to have every coach and fan of every other school - especially in the SEC - hate him with the fire of a thousand suns, you'd have to say the first week of March of his second year on the job was a rousing success.
Harbaugh traveling through the South for the second straight offseason like Sherman making his way to the sea is just another indication that he's blazing a trail not unlike one we witnessed around here almost a decade ago. The details may be different, but the general aura that surrounds him is eerily familiar.
He's Nick Saban without all those national championships.
Saban's tireless schedule when he first arrived in Tuscaloosa was filled with unparalleled recruiting dedication and innovation. Some of the Alabama coach's ideas, such as frequent spring evaluation bumps and videoconferences with recruits, sent other coaches reaching for their smelling salts and NCAA rulebooks to ask, "Can he do that?"
In the most famous example, the NCAA's answer to Saban's whirlwind spring recruiting tour was to put a stop to it. Head coaches can no longer go on the road during the spring - unless they rent space at an out-of-state high school populated by a boatload of college prospects and take their team with them.
The Saban rule hasn't exactly hindered Alabama's ability to consistently bag No. 1 signing classes. No doubt the inevitable Harbaugh rule won't deter Michigan, either.
On the field, Harbaugh's 10-3 first year at Michigan was more successful than Saban's 7-6 initial run at Alabama, but there were some parallels. Michigan lost to rivals Ohio State and Michigan State but had an eventual playoff team in the Spartans beaten until the botched punt on the final play.
Alabama lost to rivals Auburn and LSU in 2007 but had a fourth-quarter lead on eventual national champion LSU until the Tigers scored two late touchdowns.
It was a sign the times were changing.
Another sign arrived recently in my email inbox after I wrote a column about the evil genius of Michigan's week of spring practice at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. Some Michigan fans objected strongly in the same way some Alabama fans beg to differ vehemently if you dare suggest that Saban did not indeed hang the moon.
Hate mail wasn't a new experience for me. Hate mail from Michigan fans was.
The best response was an unsigned and rather well-written screed barely shorter than War and Peace from a self-declared Michigan fan. It read like a declaration of war.
A sample:
"Harbaugh will, and don't hesitate for a second to consider this anything but a complete truth, take advantage of every resource available to him that comes with being the head coach at Michigan, resources so great no other college program can come close to matching. And he will do so without hesitating to piss off the coaches, commissioners, basically anyone associated with the SEC for nothing more than the enjoyment that comes with their whining and bitching. ... And he will not slow his attack until the SEC retreats and quits attempting to impede his progress."
Alrighty then.
Another so-called Michigan fan called me "the most delusional Southerner since the guy who poisoned the trees at Auburn."
First time I've been compared to Harvey Updyke. Not to mention, a lot of the locals consider me a dang Yankee because I came and stayed.
So it seems at least a vocal few Michigan fans will take great offense if you utter a discouraging word about their esteemed head coach, who has yet to win so much as a division title in the Big Ten but has clearly captured the hearts and minds of Wolverine supporters.
Sound familiar?