Meet Jim Harbaugh's assistant, sounding board and Michigan's ...

HOUSTON — Wherever Jim Harbaugh goes, Robby Emery usually isn’t far away.

When Harbaugh took the stage Saturday at media day for the College Football Playoff championship game, Emery stood close by, a Michigan backpack slung across his shoulders.

“This is not my stuff in this backpack,” he said.

Harbaugh has been known to misplace things, like the wallet he lost somewhere in the bowels of Lucas Oil Stadium at the 2021 Big Ten Championship Game. As Michigan’s assistant to the head coach, part of Emery’s job is to keep track of Harbaugh’s stuff. But it goes a lot deeper than that.

“If these men and coaches don’t find the thing they lose, it’s really hard for them to move on to their next (thing),” Emery said.

I want to take the time to thank @umichfootball Pastor @robbyemery for this team’s success. Football is not only a physical game, but it also takes mental and for many, spiritual strength. Emery has played a big role in making sure our players are ready and he prays with the team… pic.twitter.com/TTSjAxPJfQ

— Shomari Stone (@shomaristone) January 4, 2024

Emery is a pastor who serves as Michigan’s team chaplain. He worked in ministry for seven years in Houston, where the Wolverines will face Washington on Monday night for the national championship. After Emery moved to Michigan to start a nondenominational church in 2016, a friend told him to check in with John O’Korn, a quarterback who transferred to Michigan from Houston.

Through his relationship with O’Korn, Emery got connected with the team and began serving as Michigan’s spiritual adviser. For the past two years, he has also served as Harbaugh’s personal assistant. His job is partly mundane: coordinating Harbaugh’s schedule, getting him where he needs to be, helping him prepare for his weekly news conferences. Emery also serves as a sounding board for a coach who wears his faith on his sleeve.

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Harbaugh is known for dropping biblical references into his football-speak, often with amusing results.

“I have a feeling that if Jesus were to come back now in this era, I suppose that many of the biblical analogies he’d use would be about sports as well as agriculture, maybe a combination of the two,” Harbaugh said before the Rose Bowl. “Solomon would have been a great coach, too. I have that feeling. Jesus would have been a five-star. He would have been a five-star player, no doubt about it. He would have been a Hall of Fame coach.”

It can be difficult to square Harbaugh’s public proclamations of faith with the headlines that surrounded the program. Harbaugh has been accused of lying to NCAA investigators and served a three-game suspension in September stemming from recruiting violations that occurred during the COVID-19 dead period. Michigan’s scouting and sign-stealing scandal created a firestorm and called the program’s integrity into question. For all of those reasons, Michigan’s run to the national championship game is far from an uncomplicated story of a team overcoming adversity.

Love him or hate him — and there are plenty of people in both camps — Harbaugh is unapologetically himself. His personality permeates the program. His message is so ingrained that players could hear it even when he wasn’t coaching.

“He is who he is every day,” Emery said. “I never have to wonder who’s at work, who’s at Schembechler Hall, who’s coaching the team. It’s him. He’s the same. There’s a special rhythm to him, a cadence that he brings. When he wasn’t there, our team excelled. That’s a great sign of leadership.”

There’s been talk that Monday’s national championship game could be Harbaugh’s last at Michigan. NFL rumors have been a constant during his nine-year run, but this year feels like a final act of sorts for the Harbaugh era. His team is at the summit, one step from its ultimate goal. The offseason promises more fallout from two ongoing NCAA cases. Harbaugh just turned 60 and might never have a better chance to return to the NFL.

The first question to Harbaugh at CFP media day was about the NFL, as were several of the subsequent ones. Harbaugh likes to say that no man knows the future — that’s from the Book of Ecclesiastes — and he stuck to the same script Saturday, even as reporters tried to elicit a response from every angle.

“I’ll gladly talk about the future next week,” Harbaugh said. “And I hope to have one. How about that? A future. I hope to have one.”

Part of Emery’s job is to help Michigan’s coaches and players deal with the things that come up during the college football season. As you can imagine, he’s been a busy guy this year. Everybody faces different challenges, but Emery finds they often circle back to a few familiar themes.

Dealing with loss. Finding purpose. Overcoming doubt. Figuring out what’s next.

Not long after moving to Houston, Emery took his family to NRG Stadium for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to get a taste of the local flavor. The event draws upwards of 150,000 people per day, and Emery’s young daughter got lost in the crowd. He recalled the panic he felt as he frantically called her name and the relief when they were reunited. That story became a metaphor for what happens when people lose something that matters to them.

“They lose hope,” Emery said. “They lose sight of their purpose in life. I just want to help them find that.”

Last November, running back Blake Corum lost the thing he’d been working for since he was 6 years old. Corum injured his knee in a late-season game against Illinois and wasn’t able to play in Michigan’s CFP loss to TCU. The Heisman Trophy, the national championship, the NFL Draft: All of it was within Corum’s reach, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

Corum is one of the most upbeat personalities on Michigan’s team, a player who exudes positive energy and encourages everybody else when they’re feeling down. He has never felt tempted to skip a workout or take a day off. After his surgery, in those long, dark days of winter, Corum started to question his motivation for the first time in his life.

“It put me in a deep hole, a hole I’ve never been in just mentally,” Corum said. “I had to find a way to get out. I’m a firm believer in God. He helped me in my journey. My family, sisters, mom, dad, girlfriend — everyone helped. I was able to get out, and because of my injury, it made me a better man.”

Corum took a leap of faith by returning to Michigan for his senior season and laying down the “natty or bust” ultimatum. Quarterback J.J. McCarthy did something similar when he walked into the postgame news conference after the Fiesta Bowl and vowed, “We’ll be back.” Collectively, Michigan’s core group bought into a shared purpose and then brought it to fruition.

“I knew (McCarthy) was on a mission,” Harbaugh said. “I knew Blake Corum was on a mission, Trevor Keegan, (Zak) Zinter, Mikey Sainristil, Mike Barrett, Junior Colson, Colston Loveland — and then a group of transfers came in that fit in right away; they were so tremendous for our team.

“The repetition and the focus with which they were trying to achieve that (made me say), ‘OK, this is cool. This is a blast. I love being around this.’”

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Not so long ago, it felt as if something was missing at Michigan. With this team, Harbaugh finally found what he was looking for: a group of players who love the grind as much as he does. Monday, the Wolverines will have a chance to finish it with a national championship. And nobody — not Harbaugh or anyone else — knows what’s next.

“I have no idea about that,” Harbaugh said. “I couldn’t be more happy to be here. This is right where we want to be.”

(Photo courtesy of Robby Emery)