Poker Brat Rubbing Off on Coach Jim Harbaugh

(Photo: Mlive.com)

Signing day is the first day of the year that school kids can sign themselves up to have their youthful athleticism be exploited mercilessly by college football teams in the coming American Football season.

It happens in February most years, and this year’s signing day festivities involved the bizarrely over the top hiring of Emmy award winning documentary film-maker Matthew Mills to throw a bit razzle-dazzling sort of party for Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan team. Called ‘Signing of the Stars’ the show featured corporate sponsorship up the wazoo and given a sheen of respectability by a charitable fundraising aspect, the real goal of the show was massive publicity and a celebrity hoedown.

In other words, it was precisely the sort of gig Phil Hellmuth was born for. And of course he did in fact show up to schmooze with coach Harbaugh and get up on stage to introduce linebacker Carlo Kemp to the assembled masses.

Texting and the Public

All this grows out of a long cultivated celebrity crush on Harbaugh that Helmuth has been cultivating with romantic shared airline flights and exchanges of witty banter (“Oh, Snoop Dogg doesn't make it up this way so you're going to have to settle for me.”)

Having met Harbaugh a while ago while attending a USC practice (which I am reliably informed is a thing Hollywood stars and the like occasionally do), Helmuth and the coach ended up hitting it off and one thing led to another led to Helmuth getting himself invited to the sidelines of the odd Cardinals game.

Not a one to pass up on the chance to hang with another famous person, Phil has stuck with his Coach Harbaugh at least to the extent of texting at him on occasion. Texting at him, and finding his tweets quoted verbatim in press conferences by Harbaugh. Phil doesn’t mind the plagiarism, in fact he seems to like it. He said afterwards:

"The next week there were all these poker analogies in his press conference. I said, 'This is awesome.’”

Harbaugh is now a big one for the poker analogy. We can probably blame the Poker Brat for that.

I Can Dodge Ref Decisions, Baby

Something else Harbaugh seems to have picked up from Phil is the tantrum. You want to get on TV, get bitter, blame someone else. Loudly. After a recent match in which his team shanked it into the grass, Harbaugh put in a stellar turn denouncing the referees for being unqualified:

"That’s a penalty? He said, ‘Well, it is in basketball.’ Well, this isn’t basketball. He said he also officiates basketball. I don’t know the relevance. He said it would have been a technical in basketball.”

Perhaps a fair complaint, but short on class. Hellmuth must be so proud.