The Potential Big Ten Championship Preview Nobody Predicted

When Jim Harbaugh issued an open invitation for any coach in college football to serve as a guest speaker at Michigan's football camp over the summer, many took the new Wolverines head coach's offer as an empty gesture.

Apparently Pat Fitzgerald never got that memo.

Because when Harbaugh's "Exposure U" branded camp rolled around in mid-June, the Northwestern head coach could be found in Ann Arbor, accepting his new Big Ten rival's invite. Fitzgerald wasn't alone—30 other coaches attended, per the Detroit News, including Northwestern graduate assistant Dan Hernandez—but the Wildcats coach's presence as a guest speaker served as the most noteworthy example of any coach taking Harbaugh up on his offer.

"He came to our football camp and did a tremendous job talking to the campers and sharing football lessons and life lessons with them," Harbaugh recalled on Monday of Fitzgerald's visit. "Thought it was fabulous."

"It fit my schedule," Fitzgerald said of his appearance, per Angelique S. Chengelis of the Detroit News. "If it wouldn't have fit my schedule, I wouldn't have done it."

Had Fitzgerald known back then what would be on the line the next time he'd be back in Ann Arbor, who knows if that would have still been the case.

Because when Northwestern takes the field at Michigan Stadium on Saturday for its matchup with the Wolverines, it will mark perhaps the least likely highly anticipated showdown of this season's Big Ten schedule.

Neither would admit it, but it's hard to imagine Harbaugh and Fitzgerald could have both foreseen last summer that their teams would both be ranked as highly as they would be when they'd meet head-to-head in the second weekend of October. But that's exactly the situation the No. 13 Wildcats and No. 18 Wolverines find themselves in, although both programs have arrived at this place following very different paths.

For Northwestern, its return to relevance has been marked with consistency and staying the course after back-to-back disappointing seasons in Evanston left the Wildcats with no shortage of uncertainty heading into their 2015 campaign. After winning its first four games of the 2013 season, Northwestern went on to lose seven of its final eight contests, before posting another substandard 5-7 record in 2014.

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

Entering 2015 with a schedule that started with preseason No. 21 Stanford and included a trip to Durham, North Carolina, to take on Duke, the Wildcats were looking at what could have very well been a third consecutive underwhelming year. That could have made for some uncomfortable conversations in Evanston when it came to Fitzgerald, the former Northwestern linebacker now in his 10th season as his alma mater's head coach.

Only those conversations don't seem likely to be occurring any time soon now, thanks in large part to the Wildcats' season-opening upset of the Cardinal. That set the tone for Northwestern to become one of college football's biggest surprises through the first month of the 2015 season, with the nation's fifth-ranked defense leading the way toward a 5-0 record, including last weekend's 27-0 manhandling of Minnesota.

Harbaugh, for his part, hasn't been surprised by the resiliency of Fitzgerald. Having spent four seasons as the head coach at Stanford from 2006-2010, the first-year Wolverines head man grew to know the Northwestern head coach, as both of their programs targeted many of the same prospects due to their strict academic standards.

"First crossed paths on the recruiting trail," Harbaugh said. "Sized him up and said, 'This guy’s a fine, fine coach and great competitor.' He’s done a fabulous job. He’s a great coach."

The respect between the two coaches is mutual, although Fitzgerald's admiration of Harbaugh predates his time in the coaching ranks. A native of Orland Park, Illinois, Fitzgerald watched Harbaugh quarterback his hometown Chicago Bears from 1987-1993, the start of what would be a 14-year NFL career for the now-Wolverines head coach.

"I was a fan growing up. He played, watched him play for the Bears. Him and [Bears coach Mike] Ditka getting after it on the sideline, that was pretty cool," Fitzgerald said at his Monday press conference. "And from afar, great respect for the success he’s had not only as a player but then the stops along the way, great success on the field and great job what he did at Stanford. And then goes on to the 49ers and has them in the Super Bowl. You’ve got to tip your hat to the success that he’s had."

Paul Beaty/Associated Press

In his first season back at his alma mater, Harbaugh appears to be achieving that success sooner than many expected him to.

While the former Wolverines quarterback's return to Ann Arbor was accompanied with a plethora of hype this offseason, immediate expectations remained tempered for a Michigan program that was coming off of a 5-7 season in 2014. But through his first five weeks pacing the Wolverines sideline, Harbaugh's team—like Northwestern—has been one of college football's biggest surprises, the lone loss in Michigan's 4-1 record coming by way of a season-opening 24-17 defeat at the hands of now-fifth-ranked Utah.

Unlike the Wildcats, the Wolverines' success this season has stemmed not from sticking with a head coach, but rather the spark provided by a new one, as the Harbaugh effect appears to have made an immediate impact in Ann Arbor this season.

"Jim’s a tough guy," Fitzgerald said. "And you can see that his personality’s all over this football team in all three phases."

Despite Harbaugh's status as a Big Ten newcomer and Fitzgerald's as one of the league's elder statesmen, perhaps the fondness the two seem to share for one another stems from the similarities more than their differences. Both are former players now in charge of their respective alma maters, which likely made for some natural conversation when Fitzgerald took Harbaugh up on his invitation to visit Ann Arbor this summer.

Four months later, the two head coaches have even more in common than many anticipated they would at this point. And with Michigan representing the Big Ten East and Northwestern hailing from the West, it's possible that a third meeting between Harbaugh and Fitzgerald in December could be in the works, regardless of who wins Saturday's head-to-head matchup.

Stranger happenings between the two have already occurred.

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.