Hopes are high as the Jim Harbaugh era takes hold with the Chargers

EL SEGUNDO — The Chargers pulled ahead of the Lakers anyway: the football team landed is Candidate for reigning national championship-winning coach.

Dan Hurley might have decided life in Los Angeles wasn’t for him and returned to UConn to try to win a third straight NCAA men’s basketball championship, but Jim Harbaugh found what he was looking for by signing on to lead the other NFL team here in the entertainment capital of the world.

A veteran coach and former NFL quarterback with a big personality who just led Michigan to a national title? He fits right in, a star in a constellation of recognizable sports figures.

A newsmaker, though not a rule-breaker, as Harbaugh insisted Monday. Not a liar, not a cheater, not a thief, he proclaimed at the post-practice news conference, banging on a lectern to emphasize his words.

Asked for comment on an ESPN report that seven members of Harbaugh’s former Michigan program were accused of violating NCAA rules, Harbaugh, of course, would not comment.

No way.

“Yeah, I have a comment on that,” Harbaugh said, jumping right into the topic. “Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal. I grew up with that lesson. I’ve raised my family with that lesson. I’ve preached that lesson to the teams I’ve coached. Nobody’s perfect. If you stumble, you apologize and you fix it.

“Today I make no apologies. I did not participate, was not aware of, nor was I complicit in these accusations. So I am going back to work and attacking with a zeal unknown to humanity.”

Let’s talk about him head-on, this football obsessive and competitor of competitors, whose guilt or innocence in the matter actually matters between zero and nothing to Chargers fans who roundly cheered when he was hired to replace Brandon Staley.

Many of those players have been packing the stands ready to watch all 11 training camp practices so far at The Bolt, the team’s gleaming new training facility, eager to see their team begin to embrace Harbaugh’s football image. This offseason, the Chargers let go of star receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams and drafted Joe Alt, a 6-foot-8 offensive lineman fifth overall out of Notre Dame, a sign of a shift toward Harbaugh’s smart, aggressive style of play.

New housing, new coach, new identity… it’s not like Harbaugh is hiding.

The highest-profile coach in Chargers franchise history was the most obvious person amid a sea of ​​humanity on Monday.

Players in pads and coaches in running shoes, and star quarterback Justin Herbert in a boot because of a plantar fascia injury, all moving in groups, with purpose, led by the 60-year-old coach in a long-sleeved sweatshirt and cleats.

The 6-foot-3 coach seemed to always be in the thick of the action, hands on hips or knees, striking the pose one would have seen on the Michigan sideline on any given Saturday — or Sunday before that, when he was the San Francisco 49ers’ head coach for five seasons. The first three years resulted in NFC Championship Game appearances and then, at the end of the 2012 season, there was a Super Bowl appearance against his brother, John, and his Baltimore Ravens.

San Francisco had not even made the playoffs in the eight seasons prior to Harbaugh’s arrival.

Now the Chargers, who except for a monumental collapse in a wild-card loss to Jacksonville in 2022, have not been to the postseason since 2018, are expecting more of the same from Harbaugh, who signed a five-year contract worth $16 million annually.