Say what? It's a bus wearing Harbaugh's khakis

Jim Harbaugh has been everywhere this off-season.

Now, he'll be on a bus. His image, at least.

The ubiquitous Michigan football coach will have his signature look adorn a Fox Sports bus that will travel the country to promote the Wolverines' Sept. 3 season opener at Utah on Fox Sports 1.

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.

"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," said Robert Gottlieb, executive vice president and head of marketing for Fox Sports Media Group. "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.

"If you're a college football fan, nobody's going to want to miss this."

One Fox idea was to wrap a building in Harbaugh garb, but that seemed a bit ambitious. And too stationary.

So they settled on the bus and are hoping the real-life version of the vehicle matches the artist's rendering.

"I don't know that I've seen a bus wrapped in fabric before," Gottlieb said.

Fox reached out to U-M and Harbaugh to make him aware of their plans, and "he was pleased and thankful. He seems on board with all of it."

The bus' interior will have five U-M students wearing the famous shirt, hat, whistle, sharpie and khakis. "It seems like something students would do," he said. "It's natural."

There will be 10-15 people on the bus, including Fox mascot Cleatus, and college football analysts might make appearances in certain cities.

The bus will start in Ann Arbor and then visit the Detroit Tigers' game Aug. 22. It then heads to baseball games televised by Fox affiliates in Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas, and St. Louis on its way to Salt Lake City.

FS1 will have a 90-minute pregame show Sept. 3, which will serve as an introduction to the college football season. The network also expects to have an interview with Harbaugh.

Harbaugh's friend Dave Wannstedt, now an FS1 analyst, would be the likely interviewer.

"To start with a game like this on Thursday on FS1, it's such an incredible opportunity to turn the corner and seal the deal in the public consciousness that FS1 and Fox are destinations for college football," Gottlieb said.

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