Jim Harbaugh, the new football coach at the University of Michigan, gave a painfully awkward interview this week to ESPN's Colin Cowherd, who eventually cut the question-and-answer session short because of the tension between the two.
Harbaugh is no sports media neophyte — the former coach of the San Francisco 49ers took his team to the Super Bowl in 2013 — but the bombastic Cowherd struggled to get any meaningful answer out of the coach in what appeared to be a confusing interview on ESPN's
national talk radio program Wednesday, according to the Detroit Free Press.
In one part of the interview, there was confusion when Cowherd asked Harbaugh about figuratively "buying" stock in the Big Ten's resurgence in football as a power conference, but Harbaugh believed he was saying "bye" as in an open date on the Wolverines' football schedule.
When Cowherd said that he wanted to find out about Harbaugh the person than coach, the former college and NFL quarterback responded with one line jokes that fell flat, leading the talk show host to bail on the rest of the interview.
"I love ya, it's not working, I appreciate you stopping by, Jim Harbaugh," Cowherd said, according to the Free Press, then telling his radio audience: "I tried, I asked every open-ended question I could."
Samer Kalaf, of Deadspin.com, called the clashing interview between Harbaugh and Cowherd "spectacularly awful."
"Cowherd was throwing every possible question at the Michigan football coach, and Harbaugh couldn't generate any semblance of dialogue," Kalaf wrote. "Cowherd ended up cutting the interview short, because even he knew how terrible it was."
Harbaugh took half-responsibility for the interview on Twitter, followed by Cowherd's response.
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