Jim Harbaugh's First Victory over Urban Meyer Comes on Twitter

The first edition of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry game headlined by Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh won't take place until Nov. 28.

But that hasn't stopped the Buckeyes' and Wolverines' head coaches from already going head-to-head on multiple occasions.

Most of the undercard battles between Meyer and Harbaugh have taken place on the recruiting trail, with Meyer typically getting the upper hand. The reigning national champion managed to secure the commitment of 4-star running back and Detroit native Mike Weber on national signing day, and any concerns about Ohio State's access to its Michigan pipeline went away last week when Meyer snagged a verbal pledge from 2016 4-star offensive tackle Michael Jordan.

But as of Thursday, Harbaugh is officially on the board against his newest rival.

And he got there 140-characters-or-less at a time.

Despite having only been active on Twitter for fewer than five months, Harbaugh has built an online brand for himself that is unmistakable. The new Michigan head man routinely responds to the happenings of his program with vague tweets (and apparent sub-tweets to Meyer), goes back and forth with Judge Judy and wishes his players happy birthday in his own unique way.

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Add in his shared selfies with pop star Ciara and the recent announcement of an unprecedented quarterback camp, and @CoachJim4UM has become college football's must-follow coach.

The numbers say as much.

Despite Meyer's having been active on social media since 2013, Harbaugh passed his new rival on Twitter in terms of followers in a mere fourth months. As of Friday, Harbaugh has more than 269,000 followers to Meyer's 263,000, making him the most followed coach in all of college football.

It's not hard to explain the reasoning behind Harbaugh's surge in Twitter popularity, as there isn't a coach in college football who makes his personality more apparent. As opposed to most coaches, who just use their accounts as a publicity tool to promote their programs, Harbaugh spends time documenting his offseason trips to Peru and posting pictures of his kids.

Meanwhile, it's tough to scan Meyer's account and find a tweet that looks like it was crafted himself. Most are just promotional Ohio State-themed pictures that have already been tweeted by another official school account, essentially retweeted in an effort to get them in front of Meyer's sizable audience.

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That Meyer has been been able to garner such a following without any particularly interesting tweets are testaments to both his success and the Buckeyes fanbase. But make no mistake: The three-time national champion's account could disappear or go dormant, and it'd be a while before anyone would likely notice.

The same couldn't be said for Harbaugh, as evidenced by his ability to become college football's most followed coach in such a short amount of time. Like most coaches, his account exists to create a buzz for both him and his school—he just happens to be doing it better than anybody else at the moment.

Whether that success will carry over to the football field this fall remains to be seen.

But for now, score one for Harbaugh.

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.