he knows who else is watching. “I don’t want my dad up in the
crowd to see me not sprinting to the ball,” Hutchinson says.
Chris Hutchinson knows what he sees. He was an under-
sized All-American defensive tackle and the Big Ten Defensive
Lineman of the Year at Michigan three decades before his son
followed in his footsteps. He wasn’t as big or as talented as
Aidan turned out to be, going undrafted in 1993 and washing
out of the NFL after a rookie stint in Browns training camp
ended with an adverse reaction to a tetanus shot. Chris went
to med school instead and is an emergency room doctor at
Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. But he had lessons
to pass along that stuck with Aidan and his two older sisters,
starting with one nonnegotiable: 100-percent effort.
“Whatever you do, I don’t care if you’re any good,”
Chris Hutchinson told his kids. “But you’re going to try
hard. If you don’t try hard, that’s when I have a problem.”
When Aidan was a star at Divine Child High School in
Dearborn, he and Chris had a Friday postgame routine.
They’d sit on the edge of Aidan’s bed and watch the down-
loaded film of the game together. In one game, Aidan’s
coach was utilizing him as a decoy wide receiver, splitting
him out from his usual tight end spot, and Aidan was not
exactly busting it off the line of scrimmage.
Chris pointed that out. Aidan responded he was just there
to preoccupy the secondary while plays were run to the
opposite side of the field. Chris said that didn’t matter, that
if you’re on the field you go hard, and that the video sent a
bad message to college recruiters.
Then Chris checked Aidan’s play count for that game: He’d
logged 134 snaps, playing both ways and on almost all special
teams. “Dad got a reality check,” Chris says with a laugh.
The 100-percent lesson already had been learned.JIM HARBAUGH HAS bestowed his highest accolade on
Hutchinson: “Football player.”
W hen Michigan beat Nebraska 32–29 in a tense road game
in October, raising its record to 6–0 and bringing Big Ten
championship dreams into sharper focus, Hutchinson and
Harbaugh celebrated at the final gun by screaming in each
other’s faces. What the moment lacked in articulation, it
made up for in sincerity and intensity.
Harbaugh’s postgame explanation of his feelings for
Hutchinson: “So much respect. I respect you. You’re a real
football player. Look at a Justin Smith or a Frank Gore,
Hassan Haskins, Andrew Luck—the ones where you just
say ‘football player.’ ”
Both Hutchinson and Harbaugh grew up in football fami-
lies. Jim’s dad, Jack, was a college coach, and older brother
John (now the coach of the Ravens) played as well. There
was an expectation set for how the game should be played.
“They’re wired that way,” Harbaugh says of sons of aplayer or coach. “You’ve got to tell them not to play if they’re
hurt. It’s not, ‘No, Dad, I’m not going to play. Got a pimple
on my ass, not going to play this week.’
“You never want it to be where you didn’t hustle on a play,
or you turned down a hit, you tried to get out of a workout. I
don’t want my father or brother to think I’m a coward. You’ve
got to do it right. You respect them so much that you’ve got to
give it your very best, or you know they’re going to be on you.”
Beyond the imperative to play hard, Chris Hutchinson
did not force-feed Aidan too much football too early. They
watched a lot of games together—Aidan grew up a huge
Patriots fan—but Aidan wasn’t allowed to play tackle foot-
ball until seventh grade. And he wasn’t much of a physical
specimen in those early years.38 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
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