David Sayler’s thinking is simple: The time is now.

Miami University’s athletic director has been in fundraising and image-boosting mode since starting his new job at the beginning of the year.

His latest move, a push to get Super Bowl-winning coach John Harbaugh into Miami’s Cradle of Coaches Association and onto the Yager Stadium grounds with a statue, was another step in that direction.

“I just wanted to make the Cradle more relevant to kids today,” Sayler said. “You look at the kids we recruit. Bo Schembechler is a wonderful man, a great coach, but a lot of people don’t know who he is. To me, Coach Harbaugh’s induction into this group brings it forward and makes the connection.”

Harbaugh, a 1984 Miami graduate, led the Baltimore Ravens to the Super Bowl XLVII championship last month, and that achievement immediately got Sayler thinking.

“I inquired to (senior associate athletic director) Jude Killy about what the criteria are, and that got the ball rolling,” Sayler said.

Harbaugh never coached at Miami, but that’s not part of the criteria for Cradle induction. His lengthy coaching career and status as an MU graduate were worthy of Cradle status, and a Miami graduate who wins a Super Bowl merits a statue.

Sayler went to Miami President David Hodge and the Cradle of Coaches Committee, which stated that it wasn’t planning to take action on any candidates until 2015.

“And that was just to take the vote,” Sayler said. “I didn’t want to wait until 2015, so I got the leadership of that committee together, and they agreed to hold a special meeting to look at his nomination and vote. Once they got that done, I was able to tell Coach Harbaugh.”

Sayler met with Harbaugh at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. He expected to get 30 minutes of the coach’s time. He got three hours.

“Just a salt-of-the-earth guy,” Sayler said. “The time I spent with him made me feel even better about putting him in the Cradle because he loves Miami. He actually turned down the offer twice. He was so humbled he didn’t accept it. I kept saying, ‘Look, we’re going to do this. You deserve it. You’ve earned it. You meet the criteria.’ By the end of the lunch, he had agreed to accept the honor.”

The plan is to unveil Harbaugh’s statue in the Cradle of Coaches Plaza in the spring of 2014 and tie it into a weekend of spring football.

There has been some talk that a Harbaugh statue is a bit premature. He’s only 50 years old and has been an NFL head coach for just five seasons.

Sayler’s reply: He meets the criteria, and he’s a true Miami Man.

“We need to honor ourselves in a timely fashion and be proud of the people we’ve produced and not wait many, many years to make those things happen,” Sayler said. “We need to be relevant today.”