Jim Harbaugh has made it pretty clear how he feels about Tom Brady.
"He's the greatest football player of all time," Harbaugh said a couple years ago -- and that was before Brady won Super Bowls five and six.
And to acknowledge Brady's greatness, Harbaugh wants to immortalize him at his alma mater.
"How do you feel — I think it's time, don't you, for a Tom Brady statue to be built right in front of Schembechler Hall," Harbaugh said this week on his Attack Each Day podcast. "Or do you put it at the stadium? Where would you put the Tom Brady statue?"
There's already a Schembechler statue outside the building that bears his name, so Harbaugh, along with his father Jack Harbaugh and Michigan's director of recruiting Matt Dudek, imagined a couple other possible locations: at the entrance to the stadium across from Pioneer High School, in the tunnel that leads onto the field, or in a plaza (yet to be built) somewhere outside the stadium.
"I think we can all agree, though, Tom Brady has lapped the field in football," Harbaugh said. "You're synonymous now with Babe Ruth, with Michael Jordan. ... The university that he attended should build a statue."
Brady played at Michigan from 1996-1999, starting his last two seasons. The team went 10-3 and won the Citrus Bowl when Brady was a junior, then 10-2 and won the Orange Bowl when he was a senior. Brady threw 30 touchdowns to 16 interceptions over that span.
He would be picked, famously, in the 6th round (199th overall) of the 2000 NFL Draft by the Patriots.
You can bet he'll have a statue one day -- and likely one day soon -- outside Gillette Stadium. Harbaugh wants to make sure the same is true at the Big House.
