The Battle to Become Jim Harbaugh's Next Frank Gore

Derrick Green could hardly hide his smile.

It was Michigan media day, and the Wolverines running back had just been asked to recall the day he found out his team had hired Jim Harbaugh as its new head coach.

It wasn't necessarily an uncommon question on that day, given the excitement that Harbaugh's hiring has elicited in Ann Arbor and the past seven months, but there was something genuine in Green's nonverbal response that couldn't be seen from the Michigan players at other positions on the eve of fall camp.

And the more Wolverines running backs you talked to, the more that trend continued to emerge.

"I was excited man," Green said. "An NFL coach who definitely likes to run the ball downhill. He's going to feed his backs. More so, he's a winning coach."

"He was just in the Super Bowl two years ago, he's our head coach now," fellow running back De'Veon Smith said. "That was my exact reaction."

One look at Harbaugh's track record during his time with the San Francisco 49ers, and the optimism of Green and Smith when it comes to their new head coach instantly becomes justified. In his four seasons as the 49ers head coach from 2011-2014, the team ranked a respective eighth, fourth, third and fourth in the NFL in rushing yards per game, a stretch that included three consecutive NFC Championship Game appearances.

Even more exciting for the Wolverines running backs than Harbaugh's recent results in the run game, however, is the way he went about obtaining them.

Tony Ding/Associated Press

Featuring 5'9", 217-pound running back Frank Gore, Harbaugh's teams in San Francisco relied heavily on a power run game. Harbaugh's preference for bigger backs was also proven in the 2014 NFL draft when the 49ers selected 6'0", 235-pound running back Carlos Hyde, who rushed for 333 yards and four touchdowns in his rookie season out of Ohio State.

That's good news for the 5'11, 234-pound Green and the 5'11", 228-pound Smith, each of whom possess similar power running styles. They'll compete with one another and with USC transfer Ty Isaac (6'3", 240 pounds) and Drake Jonson (6'1", 207-pounds) for carries this season, as well as the right to be the first version of Gore in Harbaugh's Michigan offense.

"It's a good thing," Green insisted. "It's competition, but at the end of the day, we're just trying to make each other better."

That might be easy to say at a position like running back, where two-player systems have been more common than not. It's not like the heated quarterback competition that's currently underway in Ann Arbor, with Shane Morris and Jake Rudock vying to become the Wolverines' starting quarterback.

But sooner or later, one would imagine that Harbaugh would prefer that a feature back on whom he can rely consistently will emerge. For his part, the first-year Michigan head coach has remained mum on the battle, saying only that it's a luxury to have as many options as he appears to.

"There will be plenty of license and plenty of opportunity for one, two, three of our running backs to assert themselves, come to the fore and be counted on," Harbaugh said. "That, we'll be watching very closely and hoping that it occurs early here in camp."

With the Wolverines having entered a "submarine"—code for "no media access"—with the start of fall camp, it remains unclear where Michigan's pecking order at running back stands. Smith, however, appears to be the de facto front-runner to be the primary back after rushing for 519 yards and six touchdowns during his sophomore season in 2014.

That may not be all that impressive, given the high standards that Harbaugh has for his run game, but it gives the Warren, Ohio, native an experience advantage over his fellow Wolverines running backs. Green, also now a junior, rushed for 471 yards and three scores a season ago, while Johnson rushed for 361 yards and four touchdowns before tearing his ACL in Michigan's season-finale loss to Ohio State.

As a freshman in 2013, Isaac rushed for 236 and two TDs while playing for the Trojans before sitting out the 2014 campaign with the Wolverines due to NCAA transfer rules.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

"They're young guys, young football players who are hungry," said new Michigan running backs coach and running back great Tyrone Wheatley. "They want to play. All these guys want to play."

And if Harbaugh has his way, all of them will, although it will certainly be difficult to divide playing time evenly between the quartet. Isaac may have the most upside, but Smith and Green appear to have the inside track to the lion's share of the carries, with Johnson potentially being the odd man out as he returns from his knee injury.

Whom Harbaugh will ultimately rely on to be his next Gore won't be known until the Wolverines take the field for their Sept. 3 opener against Utah.

But if Michigan can find the same success on the ground that Harbaugh's teams did in San Francisco, it won't just be the running backs who will be smiling in Ann Arbor.

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.