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Uh…(no) khakis: Everyone is talking about Jim Harbaugh’s wardrobe choice from Saturday night

Mark Schipper

By Mark Schipper

Published:

Astronauts wear space suits, jockeys wear jodhpurs, and Jim Harbaugh—head football coach, Michigan—wears khaki pants. He has become as synonymous with the staple leg wear as Mark Twain was with white linen jackets, so last night when Harbaugh did not wear the bottom half of his personal uniform on the sidelines in Minneapolis, people took notice.

Was this a good thing or bad? They say change is inevitable but some stability, particularly in this insane year of our lord 2020, is comforting. Harbaugh swapping out his staple pant wear in Week 1 for the first time, apparently ever, caused a kind of anxiety in some quarters.

But, looked at from another angle, the Wolverines blasted a top 25 team on the road as Harbaugh enjoyed a sartorial revolution on the sideline, a feat Michigan has struggled to complete during the coach’s five year tenure in Ann Arbor. 

Good, bad, or indifferent—khaki friend or foe—the college football cognoscenti took notice on Twitter.

There is hardly another more inscrutable personality in college football than Harbaugh’s, so whether he just forgot to wash his pants Friday night, or the trend of dynamic new pantaloon wearing continues into the following weeks, it is a storyline many will no doubt be following closely. 

Mark Schipper

Mark Schipper is a reporter, sportswriter, and aspiring novelist living in Chicago, Illinois.