Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh will "have his signature look adorn a Fox Sports bus that will travel the country to promote" the Sept. 3 season opener at Utah on FS1, according to Mark Snyder of the DETROIT FREE PRESS. The bus' exterior will be "wrapped in real fabric to simulate Harbaugh's famous khakis-and-shirt attire, with a Sharpie around the neck and play card tucked into the waist." Fox Sports Exec VP/Marketing Robert Gottlieb said, "Once it became official that Harbaugh was going to return to coach, it became a huge, huge priority for us, from a production standpoint and a marketing standpoint. There's a lot of traditional media we're going to do around the game: TV commercials and radio commercials. But it was so special, and the appeal and the interest in Harbaugh and the program is so intensified, that we definitely wanted to do something that was a little out of the ordinary that would help drive home the message that this game is coming." Snyder noted one Fox idea was to "wrap a building in Harbaugh garb, but that seemed a bit ambitious." So Fox execs "settled on the bus and are hoping the real-life version of the vehicle matches the artist's rendering." Gottlieb: "I don't know that I've seen a bus wrapped in fabric before." He added that Fox reached out to UM and Harbaugh to "make him aware of their plans, and 'he was pleased and thankful.'" The bus' interior will "have five U-M students wearing the famous shirt, hat, whistle, sharpie and khakis." There will be 10-15 people on the bus, "including Fox mascot Cleatus, and college football analysts might make appearances in certain cities" (DETROIT FREE PRESS, 8/15).
