Jim Harbaugh's Preseason Hype Is Over. It's Go Time in Ann Arbor

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — On Thursday, when six-year-old Brady Carpenter was greeted with a hug after asking Jim Harbaugh how much milk he had to drink to grow big enough to be a quarterback, it provided just the latest of many viral moments that have emanated from Michigan this offseason.

But for those who have been a fan of the summer—and spring—of Harbaugh since he returned to college football last winter, it was an image worth savoring. Because, with the Wolverines' first fall camp under their new head coach kicking off on Friday, the unprecedented preseason buzz for a team coming off a losing season is about to come to an end.

"Just to let you know, we're going into a submarine and you won't see us for a while," Harbaugh said at Michigan's media day on Thursday. "You won't hear from us. You won't see us. We'll be working."

That's hardly been the case for the past seven months, when, intentional or not—Harbaugh claims the latter—the Wolverines have been a mainstay in the headlines of the college football world. Even rival Ohio State, which is coming off a national championship season, hasn't been talked about as much as Michigan seems to have been, despite the Wolverines posting a 5-7 record just a season ago.

Thanks to the hiring of its new head coach, however, a bowl game-less winter in Ann Arbor found itself a little less cold.

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"I was in Chipotle with my dad in the line," tight end Jake Butt answered when asked where he was when Harbaugh's Dec. 30 hiring was announced. "When I found out, I got fired up. I got a quadruple meat burrito to celebrate. I was super pumped.

"Obviously Coach Harbaugh's one of the better football coaches in the whole world."

That was the initial reason for the sudden spotlight that had been cast on Ann Arbor, and it hardly came as a surprise that a high-profile coach like Harbaugh switching jobs garnered sizable attention. Especially when his new job happened to come at his alma mater, which has spent the better part of the past seven years in college football irrelevance.

"He used to play here. That's a big thing," running back Derrick Green said. "You don't see many coaches doing that."

The months that would follow the announcement of Harbaugh's hiring were even more unlike anything often seen from college head coaches.

It started with his unique Twitter account, which he used to give Judge Judy a shoutout and take a perceived shot at Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer during the recruiting battle for Mike Weber. From agreeing with Nicki Minaj to sharing his preference of "attacking [the] day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind," Harbaugh seemed to create headlines with every thought he shared in 140 characters or less this offseason, and subsequently attention for the Michigan program.

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But it wasn't just the Twittersphere that helped build Harbaugh's offseason buzz.

Whether due to his unique personality or his knack for being in the right place at the right time, the new Wolverines head man became an easy target for the headline-hungry consumers of college football. Such was the case when en route to the airport for a trip back to California in March, Harbaugh and Michigan staffer Jim Minick stopped on the highway to aid the victims of a car crash on Interstate 94.

The story instantly went viral, only proving the power Harbaugh already possessed before even coaching a game standing on the Michigan Stadium sideline.

"We definitely knew [hiring Harbaugh] was a big deal, but we didn't think, like when Coach Harbaugh saved the lady from the car crash, we didn't expect that to happen," offensive lineman Kyle Kalis said of the attention paid to his new head coach. "You can't count on that."

And then there was the time Harbaugh was pictured shirtless working out with attendees at a summer satellite camp and an April meeting with five Supreme Court justices. Planted PR opportunities intended to spread the word of Wolverines football? Perhaps. Although the former Michigan signal-caller insists otherwise.

"Not striving to be creating any buzz. Just striving to coach the football team," Harbaugh said at Big Ten media days in Chicago last week. "Not trying to be popular or anything. Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked. So just coaching football."

But whether Harbaugh's offseason in the limelight was contrived or not is no longer relevant.

Because with fall camp officially under way in Ann Arbor, all that matters from this point forward when it comes to Harbaugh is how his team performs on the field. The offseason attention may have been good for recruiting and could eventually pay off in the long run, but it will now be results, and not tweets, that define the former San Francisco 49ers head coach's latest endeavor.

"It's been cool. It's been different. With a guy like Coach Harbaugh at the reins, everybody wants a piece, everybody wants to get in here and see what's going on," Kalis said. "That's nice, but at the same time, we like to keep it to ourselves and then let our play do the talking. We've said that, we've said that and we've said that, but this is the year where I think it's actually going to happen."

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And while the rest of the college football world—outside of perhaps Columbus and East Lansing—may have forgotten, last season's 5-7 record hasn't been lost on anyone inside the Michigan locker room.

"It's embarrassing," running back De'Veon Smith said. "It's unacceptable. There's no excuse for us to have a season the way we did."

With fall camp now here, the Wolverines can finally turn the page on their disappointing 2014 campaign, even if everybody else in college football seems to have done it for them with the arrival of the Harbaugh era.

That, however, presents its own unique set of challenges, as Michigan aims to prove it's deserving of hype for other reasons besides its new head coach.

"I'm ready to get on the field and compete and show everybody what we're about and show everybody we're not just about this buzz because we have Coach Harbaugh," Smith said. "We're a great team and we're Michigan. That's what I'm ready for."

Ben Axelrod is Bleacher Report's Big Ten lead writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BenAxelrod. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes were obtained firsthand. All statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com. Recruiting rankings courtesy of 247Sports.