Why the stakes have never been higher for Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh

The question came for Jim Harbaugh just as it does every November.

It has been 32 eventful years since a young Harbaugh sat in front of a television camera wearing a button-up white shirt and guaranteed that his Michigan Wolverines would beat Ohio State and punch their ticket to the Rose Bowl. As has happened in every year that he has been around Michigan since, someone this Monday wanted to know what he remembered about that moment more than half a lifetime ago.

The following year Urban Meyer was a young graduate assistant called into an Ohio State meeting room to learn his boss and mentor, Earle Bruce, had been fired just days before facing their rival in Ann Arbor. Meyer remembers that…