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Michigan's Jim Harbaugh: Winning The Big Game Is Really (Really) Hard

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Football is a convenient archetype for managers to study. Typically, teams featured in case studies are winnersNew England Patriots in the NFL and Alabama in college.

Focusing on winning teams, however, can obscure lessons that may seem out of reach for most managers. For that reason, it can help to examine teams that fall short of their goals.

And that brings us to the University of Michigan football team. It opened this year—its fourth under head coach Jim Harbaugh—by losing 24-17 to Notre Dame. To its credit, the team rebounded and rattled off 10 consecutive wins. Its defense was ranked the best in college. And so, all signs pointed to a victory against arch-rival Ohio State in the last game of the season. Michigan was favored even though the game would be played in Columbus where Michigan has not won since 2000. In fact, Michigan has only beaten OSU once in the past fifteen years and never has it won against its head coach Urban Meyer.

Hopes that were sky high were dashed brutally as OSU moved the ball swiftly and efficiently. The final score was 62-39, but even that lopsided figure did not tell the whole story. OSU took a knee on Michigan’s seven-yard line. An act of sportsmanship that really serves as a dagger of humiliation.

Jim Harbaugh had no answers after the game except to compliment Ohio State, a team he had twice-beaten when he was Michigan’s quarterback in the mid-'80s. What happened in Columbus is that Michigan’s coaches were out-prepared and out-coached. There is no shame in losing; there is much criticism, however, when your team seems unprepared.

Harbaugh reminds me of Edward Lampert, the hedge fund manager who bought Sears, not because he wanted to make a quick buck but because he genuinely wanted to save the company. He has failed and this year removed himself as CEO after closing more than a quarter of all stores.

Harbaugh’s heart is in the right place. What he does next will be a lesson for every manager. What do you do when you cannot, despite repeated efforts, advance your team to the next level of achievement? Many managers would simply give up and move on. Harbaugh’s competitive fires burn intensely, and he is unlikely to be fired.

Harbaugh has done much right; he has won at least 10 games for three of his four seasons. Yet losing badly again to OSU, change is in order, except Harbaugh played that card last season when he ditched his offensive coordinator and brought in a new offensive line coach. So now what?

Part of an answer may lie in the example set by Michigan basketball’s head coach, John Beilein. Long an offensive minded coach, Beilein realized two years ago that his teams need to play more defensively. This realization came after his team had won the Big Ten tournament and been repeated contenders in the NCAA tournament, advancing to the title spot in 2013.

Beilein did not let his 40-plus years as a head coach stop him from innovating. He put ego and experience aside for the good of the team. Beilein hired an assistant who turned the team into a defensive juggernaut, in the process going all the way to the NCAA championship game vs. Villanova. Beilein brought in a coach who could teach the team a new style of play.

What moves Harbaugh makes next will determine Michigan’s fate for the foreseeable future. But one thing is for certain, you can’t have a rival if you never beat them.

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