Mark Snyder

Detroit Free Press

ATLANTA – Everywhere he goes on his satellite camp tour, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh becomes a magnet.

Faces he hasn’t seen in years suddenly pop up in these different venues as friends, acquaintances and distant fans come to see him.

There were a string of them in Atlanta at Maynard Holbrook Jackson High today, from former NFL tailback Garrison Hearst to former U-M basketball captain Joe Johnson to a few dozen fans sitting through the blazing Georgia sun waiting for autographs.

But the one Harbaugh knew best 30 years ago stood quietly under a shaded tree with his sons: Famous professional wrestler Scott Steiner.

The 53-year-old Steiner (legal name Rechsteiner) attended Michigan in the mid-1980s at the same time as Harbaugh and was on the wrestling team under coach Dale Bahr. Like Harbaugh in 1986, he earned All-America honors, taking sixth nationally at 190 pounds.

He was very close with a number of football players during that time and hung out some with Harbaugh.

“When he played in Chicago, he and his running back came and watched us wrestle,” said Steiner, who was born in Bay City but has lived in Atlanta since he moved there to wrestle for Ted Turner’s WCW organization in the late 1980s.

His U-M football friends sought him out in the years following — former linebacker Mike Boren in Ohio, former lineman Jumbo Elliott in New York.

“I lived with Jumbo for three weeks until Bo (Schembechler) found out and kicked us out,” Steiner said, recalling some other Wolverines he lived with before Bo got involved again. “He didn’t like it. We were too crazy.”

Harbaugh was never too close to their craziness, Steiner said, because “he had too much scrutiny on him.”

He thinks fondly about former U-M strength coach Mike Gittleson, who would let Steiner and his brother Rick into the football weight room. He and Rick became one of the most famous tag teams in wrestling history.

Having followed Michigan football the past three decades, Steiner gladly watches Harbaugh’s fury of attention.

As Harbaugh’s satellite camps go international, that’s nothing new for Steiner, who has traveled the world wrestling — “North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Australia, everywhere you could be.”

Steiner may not have to wait as long to see Harbaugh again. He and his sons, who are going into sixth and eighth grade, may come to Ann Arbor for a U-M youth camp July 11.

Contact Mark Snyder: msnyder@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark__snyder.

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