Storyline: “It.” We know “it” is when we see it. “It” traveled a path to Tuscaloosa and, later, to Columbus. Has “it” found a home in Ann Arbor?
Conventional Wisdom works in funny ways, doesn’t it? Seemingly unassailable assumptions, the “safe bets,” can be turned upside down. A good example is Big Ten football, 2015.
2015 was going to be an easy year to call—Ohio State or Michigan State. The showdown would come in Columbus on Saturday November 21. Nobody else in the league would contend, so the thinking went, including rival Michigan with its new coach, Jim Harbaugh. What we’d get, for sure, in Harbaugh 1.0 is Harbaugh-style entertainment—done in classic “Shirtless Jim” style.
Courtesy: sports.usatoday.com
The B1G championship picture may still end up as predicted, but—Whoa!—the pre-season script has changed–big time. At season’s mid-point, Michigan is the hottest, and possibly best, team in the league, solid in all three dimensions of the game. ‘Go Blue!’ fans are seeing week-to-week improvement, too. The Wolverines are pounding opponents, largely because foes can’t score on UM’s stout defense—with three consecutive shutouts going into the this weekend’s game with rival MSU.
Courtesy: usatoday.com
And what’s up with OSU and MSU? Struggle. Seemingly inferior opponents—Indiana for OSU, Purdue for MSU—claw and scratch, nearly pulling off upsets. OSU isn’t firing on all cylinders and MSU hasn’t covered the spread all season.
But lest we attribute Michigan’s turnaround to a miracle performed by Father Jim, let’s remind ourselves of what happened just a year ago. At this very point in the ’14 season OSU sat in the second tier of the Top 25. Today there stands Michigan, ranked #12 in this week’s AP Poll.
Last year at this time few gave OSU much a chance to make the Final Four. But they did. Because of that outcome there’s talk these days that Michigan might repeat the feat. If Michigan wins out—and the Wolves play both MSU and OSU at home this year—that’s a feasible outcome. Of course, there’re a lot of “ifs” in that equation, but who would have thought (just a few weeks ago) that it would be possible? “Nobody I know” is my answer.
But, perhaps—just perhaps—UM’s rapid turnaround isn’t so surprising. We’ve seen a similar script play out before. What’s happening in Ann Arbor today seems eerily similar to what happened not that long ago in Columbus and, before that, in Tuscaloosa.
What’s the storyline? Ohio State and Alabama—just like Michigan—are national football powers that had fallen on hard times. Lackluster coaches. Average teams. Limited success. Upset fans. Then, each school turned over the reins to a national championship head coach: Nick Saban from LSU and Urban Meyer from Florida. Each coach knows how to win, win fast, and—most importantly—win BIG. And that’s exactly what they did. There’s a campus statue of Saban in testimony to his accomplishments; and Meyer has never lost a B1G regular-season game—home or away.
Courtesy: finebaumfan.com
What’s interesting about this narrative is that both schools came off the mat. Alabama, a school that had produced football wins at a 70%+ win-rate historically, lost an unimaginable 70% of its games over the 3 years prior to Saban’s arrival. And OSU–scandal-ridden and with its national championship coach (Jim Tressel) fired—went 6-7 the year prior to Meyer’s entry.
Michigan? It’s a similar narrative. The winningest team in college football history with a ~75% all-time win percentage was 46-42 in the 7 years prior to Coach Jim’s arrival in “Ann Harbaugh.”
The Big House didn’t seem so big from ’07-‘14. It does now.
But, wait. We saw a resurgence of Michigan football just a few years ago, didn’t we? In 2011, Brady Hoke’s first year at the helm, UM went 11-2, including a Sugar Bowl win. But that was it. Blue played about .500 ball from there, never again challenging for the Big Ten crown.
But despite underachieving on the field an historic dimension of Michigan football didn’t change over that timespan—national recruiting. According to Scout.com, here’s how UM ranked nationally in recruiting from ’07-’14: 10, 6, 14, 11, 29, 4, 2, and 27. That’s 4 Top 10 classes in 8 years, including 2 Top 5 classes. The talent was in Ann Arbor to succeed, but the team did not.
It’s too early to tell if Harbaugh will turn out to be another Saban or Meyer. But early indications suggest he may have that illusive “it”—a set of characteristics that separates functional coaches from the select few who succeed year after year and win national championships along the way.
Key to “it”—across all professional fields—is fit. It’s the capacity to handle complex challenges with an extraordinary level of performance—and with a style that aligns well with tasks at hand. While others may be able to “learn their way” into high-level performance (“early Saban” is an example), some just have “it” from the beginning. Meyer is an example. From the get-go (at Bowling Green, then at Utah) you could see Urban had “it.” Jim Tressel was the same way, winning multiple national championships at Youngstown State before migrating to Columbus.
Courtesy: inquisitor.com
But fit isn’t just about finding a head man who’s phenomenally adept at executing a complex set of head coaching tasks. It’s also about fitting that person to a context that’s makes it possible (and easier) to win at the highest level.
That’s exactly what we have at Alabama, Ohio State, and Michigan: three schools that are at the top of the college football food chain, financially. But other schools are in that class, too, most notably Texas, with the biggest football budget in the nation. But as Texas struggles, Alabama and Ohio State came off the mat to regain greatness. Michigan may be ready to rejoin that class.
But “maybe” is an awfully big word. And the scary alternative to Blue fans is this: if Harbaugh doesn’t get it done, what do we do then? That answer is as elusive as winning a national championship.
Just ask Notre Dame and Southern Cal.
