{"id":424444,"date":"2026-08-05T12:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T12:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424444\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T12:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T12:02:12","slug":"chargers-and-jim-harbaugh-reconnect-to-their-san-diego-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424444\/","title":{"rendered":"Chargers and Jim Harbaugh reconnect to their San Diego origins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SAN DIEGO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0This is where it all started for Jim Harbaugh<\/a>, this idyllic hilltop University of San Diego campus with its sweeping views of the city and ocean, Spanish Renaissance architecture and courtyards lined with palm trees.<\/p>\n

Harbaugh had been an assistant coach elsewhere, learning the ropes as an offensive consultant at Western Kentucky and quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders, but this was his first chance to be a head coach. It launched a second career for the longtime NFL quarterback, taking him to Stanford, the San Francisco 49ers \u2014 where his team fell just short of a Lombardi Trophy \u2014 to a national championship at Michigan<\/a>, and now to the Chargers<\/a>, where he\u2019s beginning his third season.<\/p>\n

The Chargers have moved training camp to USD for Tuesday and Wednesday this week, reuniting Harbaugh with a place legendary Raiders owner Al Davis advised him not to come<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAwww, Jimmy, Jimmy, I thought you wanted to be a pro coach,\u201d Davis, voice dripping with disappointment, told him in 2004 when he learned Harbaugh was leaving his Raiders gig.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Mr. Davis, you coached college football,\u201d Harbaugh countered.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Davis said, \u201cbut that was at USC, not U-S-D.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harbaugh knows he made the right decision, and never doubted it, even when he and defensive coordinator Dave Adolph \u2014 another NFL fixture \u2014 had to roll up their sleeves and scrub down the cramped and filthy USD locker room themselves; even when he and his assistant coaches routinely made hundreds of PB&J sandwiches to provide late-night snacks for their players, who don\u2019t receive scholarships at the NCAA Division I FCS level; and even when he pushed himself so hard at practice \u2014 he was the head coach, mind you \u2014 that he got sick all over himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very demanding of us,\u201d recalled former Toreros linebacker Matt Gabbard, \u201cbut it wasn\u2019t something he didn\u2019t demand of himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

They still call it Harbaugh Hill, a steep dirt road overlooking the practice fields on campus. Football players would plod up it as part of their training camp, and Harbaugh would run with them and urge them along. It bothered him that nobody could keep pace with receiver Nick Garton, who also excelled in soccer and track in high school, and could breeze up the grade like it was nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t anybody going to challenge this guy?\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cFinally, I said, \u2018I\u2019ll do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jim <\/p>\n

Jim Harbaugh smiles during a practice with the University of San Diego in November 2005.<\/p>\n

(Lenny Ignelzi \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

So he did, matching Garton stride for stride before losing his breakfast all over himself. The coach didn\u2019t stop running, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cI finished second,\u201d he said, recalling the episode after Chargers practice this week and clearly still proud of his accomplishment.<\/p>\n

Harbaugh coached at USD for three seasons, starting in 2004, and was three years removed from his playing career. He was 40 when he took the job and still had thoughts of putting the pads back on. He even looked into playing arena football and entertained the idea of playing for the Los Angeles Avengers, but that thought only lasted a day or so. He really wanted to be a coach, and brought along his dad, Jack Harbaugh, to oversee the running backs in that first season.<\/p>\n

Jim and Jack would carpool to campus every day from their Coronado homes, father and son talking plays, personnel, family and life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I saw was passion,\u201d said Jack Harbaugh<\/a>, who spent six decades coaching high school and college football. \u201cIf I could use one word, it\u2019s Jim\u2019s passion for the game. He would coach as if that was maybe the last job he\u2019d ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n

That resonated with the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we saw coach Harbaugh come in and have that next-level intensity, you kind of get chills running down your spine,\u201d defensive back Phil Bretsch said. \u201cLike, \u2018Oh boy, this is going to be different.\u2019 But you\u2019re ready for it, right? We\u2019re not there for any other reason other than we love football.\u201d<\/p>\n

The turnaround was abrupt. Harbaugh inherited a historically mediocre program and coached his team to a 29-6 record in three seasons. The 2006 team went 11-1, won the Pioneer League, and Harbaugh was a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award, presented to the top coach in the FCS.<\/p>\n

One of his biggest accomplishments was luring Adolph out of retirement. The defensive specialist was almost 70 and was a turnaround artist with all sorts of NFL franchises \u2014 Cleveland, Kansas City, Raiders and Chargers \u2014 but in his later years was the primary caregiver for his ailing wife. Harbaugh asked and asked and asked, and finally got a yes when he helped arrange for in-home care for the Adolphs for several hours a day.<\/p>\n

Coaching at this level was about making sacrifices for the love of the game. There was no school money to feed the hungry players after their team meetings, so Harbaugh and the other coaches \u2014 essentially volunteers \u2014 shelled out for tubs of peanut butter, vats of jelly and dozens of loaves of bread every night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were always on the hunt for calories,\u201d Bretsch said. \u201cI think I stayed alive off Carl\u2019s Jr. 99-cent chicken sandwiches for about six months throughout my career. We always joked, \u2018What if we would have had the training table the big programs had? What would we have been like?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But those teams had something different. They had Harbaugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a competitive advantage from a coaching standpoint every game we went into,\u201d said running back J.T. Rogan, who went on to work with Harbaugh at Stanford and Michigan. \u201cI would refer to him as my father in football, but that would probably be diminishing the impact he\u2019s had on my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just about Harbaugh\u2019s football mind or unwavering intensity and enthusiasm. He had connections. When he took his team up to play Menlo College, he had Jerry Rice deliver the pregame talk. Steve Mariucci spoke to the team as well. So did longtime college basketball coach Tom Crean, Harbaugh\u2019s brother-in-law.<\/p>\n

\"Jim <\/p>\n

Jim Harbaugh huddles with his teammates during a game between the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos in October 2000.<\/p>\n

(Stephen Dunn \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

When the Toreros needed cold-weather clothing for a game at Dayton, Harbaugh cajoled the Chargers, where he spent part of his playing career, into donating some of their mothballed gear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got turtlenecks with the Chargers insignia on them,\u201d Rogan recalled. \u201cWe\u2019d have these jackets with a big Chargers lightning bolt, the dark-blue stuff before the baby-blue stuff was en vogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Harbaugh, the job was part-coaching and part \u201cLet\u2019s Make a Deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Saint Mary\u2019s dropped its football program, he called the East Bay school not only to recruit players but to round up equipment that would otherwise go unused. He wound up buying virtually everything the program had, writing a $10,000 check out of his personal account.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got all the practice pants, the helmets, the thigh boards, everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He rented a U-Haul and drove to Moraga to collect the stuff. When Harbaugh was about to head out, the Saint Mary\u2019s coach asked one more question:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need goalposts?\u201d<\/p>\n

Harbaugh was all ears.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe showed me these year-old goalposts,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were beautiful. I put them in the U-Haul and took them too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chargers <\/p>\n

Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh watches training camp at the University of San Diego on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

(Gregory Bull \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

With the truck loaded and as he was preparing to pull out, Harbaugh got a call on his cell. It was an unheralded USD quarterback recruit from Oakland named Josh Johnson. He was supposed to be at freshman orientation but didn\u2019t have a way to get from the Bay Area down to San Diego.<\/p>\n

Harbaugh was quick on his feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018My parents are working and can\u2019t take me down there,\u2019\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cI said, \u2018Tell you what, can you be ready in an hour?\u2019 He said he could be, so I drove the U-Haul over to his place and picked him up an hour later.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two spent the next seven hours together, driving to USD. Even now, Harbaugh made clear he wasn\u2019t bending the rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t an extra benefit for Josh Johnson,\u201d he said. \u201cI put him to work. He unloaded the whole truck.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his first practice, Johnson went from seventh on the quarterback depth chart to second. He would go on to become one of the greatest players in the history of the program, leading the Toreros to back-to-back Pioneer League championships. He set many school records, including his 2007 season in which he threw 42 touchdown passes with one interception.<\/p>\n

Johnson, now playing for the Cincinnati Bengals, has played for 14 NFL franchises, some more than once. That\u2019s the most in league history for a quarterback. It\u2019s an astounding rise from a tiny, non-scholarship university in San Diego. An odyssey of an ascent.<\/p>\n

Harbaugh, for one, can relate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0This is where it all started for Jim Harbaugh, this idyllic hilltop University of San Diego campus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-424444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}