Meet the 6-Year-Old Who Stole the Show at Jim Harbaugh's Press Conference

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — With all due respect to the reporters in attendance, the highlight of Michigan's media day didn't stem from inquiries into the Wolverines quarterback controversy, questions about their practice schedule for the remainder of the month or even Jim Harbaugh's own unique spin on the start of fall camp.

Rather, the most memorable moment from Harbaugh's Thursday press conference came as the result of a question so simple that a first-grader could have asked it.

In fact, one did.

As Harbaugh took part in his routine, dodging and ducking as he was probed by beat writers throughout his first Michigan media day conference, sprinkled-in questions from children from the "Kids Go Blue Club" gave the first-year Wolverines head coach a chance to crack a rare smile on the eve of fall camp.

Such was the case when six-year-old Brady Carpenter stepped to the podium with a microphone in his hand and a carefully crafted question on his mind.

"How much milk do I have to drink to be big enough to be quarterback?" asked Brady, who was named after former Michigan quarterback and New England Patriots great Tom Brady.

The room exploded in laughter. And then Harbaugh responded with a question of his own.

"Can I give you a hug?"

Carpenter obliged, before listening to Harbaugh give his verbal answer.

"That is a great question. I love that you're thinking about that," he said. "Drink as much milk as your little belly can hold, at all times. It could be chocolate milk, it could be the 2 percent, but the ideal is the whole milk. That's the ideal. As much as your little belly can hold."

By the time Harbaugh's press conference had come to a close 25 minutes later, Carpenter was an unexpected social media star. Having attended the event alongside his parents and grandfather, Carpenter saw his question tweeted out by the official SportsCenter account in a post that has garnered thousands of retweets and favorites.

"It was very cool," Carpenter told Bleacher Report with a big smile moments after the press conference ended.

For his parents, it was more than "cool."

After all, it was Brady's father, Jason Carpenter, who came up with the question after viewing Harbaugh's appearance on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel in April. Speaking with Andrea Kremer, Harbaugh explained that as a child, he was obsessed with drinking milk, because he believed it was the key to his growing to be 6'2"—the ideal height, in his mind, for a quarterback.

"He was on HBO talking about how he used to hand milk out and steal all the extra milk," Jason said. "So I thought it was a cute question for him to ask."

The Carpenters figured the question would garner some laughs from the crowd and maybe even Harbaugh himself, but never did they expect the response that it received from both the head coach and social media. As other members of the Kids Go Blue Club left for lunch, the family found itself battling with the Internet connection at Michigan's Junge Family Champions Center to pull up Twitter and see all of the surprising attention their son was receiving.

"You're our little superstar," Brady's mother, Eva, told him.

But for the family from Ann Arbor—the head-to-toe maize-and-blue attire was a dead giveaway—the moment was about more than retweets and pictures.

"He's been coming here since he was two with his dad," Eva said of her son while fighting back tears. "It makes me really proud to see him here, with his grandfather."

At one point in his press conference, Harbaugh said that he hasn't gotten nostalgic often since returning to the town where he spent a part of his childhood and college career. But one would imagine that witnessing the Carpenters' joy on Thursday would count as one of those exceptions, as Ann Arbor's favorite son has created an excitement in his new and old hometown, one that's palpable even at a typically mundane event such as a media day.

Tony Ding/Associated Press

And while the former Wolverines quarterback claims the creation of that buzz has been unintentional, it's very much real. That was evidenced on Thursday by the headlines a first-grader helped create at Harbaugh's final press conference before the start of fall camp.

"It's Coach's first main press conference, and he gets to give him a hug and ask about being strong and drinking milk," Jason said. "That's awesome."

Brady put his thoughts on the day in much simpler terms.

"I liked it a lot," the six-year-old said.

Based on the reaction from his parents, the Internet and—perhaps most importantly—Harbaugh, he wasn't alone.

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.