To paraphrase Rick Pitino, Jim Harbaugh ain’t walkin’ through that door.
The University of Michigan must finally come to the conclusion the rest of the world did some time ago – it’s football program isn’t quite as prestigious as it once was, but for reasons other than Rich Rodriguez.
It’s a different college sports world now. It’s not 1985 or even 1997.
Other schools have realized this, accepted it and moved on to rebuild. Some who haven’t, like Notre Dame, continue to struggle with unrealistic expectations and dreams of multiple national championships.
In fact, you could say that are only a handful of college programs that are perennial contenders. The rest are simply pretenders, lying to themselves about the cyclical nature of sports, and more importantly, missing parity punctuation at the end of each season.
Texas and USC went through down years this season, as did Florida. Florida won two titles in three seasons, but with a new coaching staff, it’s not a guarantee the Gators are a top five program for the next decade.
Those schools will certainly rebound, but Michigan will never be the program it once was. To some, it looks an awful lot like Indiana University basketball.
Legendary coach leaves. Program struggles to find identity, fails to accept its new spot in the hierarchy, loses in-state recruits and it’s base, bottoms out, flounders as it tries to find its place in the new world of college sports, where young athletes care more about weather, professional prospects and TV time than they do about prestige.
Reality is that many athletes do not want to attend college for academics. And they certainly don’t want to spend what little free time they have in a weather climate that features rain, snow or cold wins out of Canada for six months a year. I hear summertime in Michigan is beautiful. Sadly, that’s when college sports are on a hiatus.
Wonder why Duke, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Texas have been so successful in college basketball over the last 20 years? Recruiting. And nothing helps recruiting like sunshine and scenery. All of the aforementioned schools stole players from Midwestern states. It’s like a formula. Good coaching, pipeline to the pros, great weather equals a hotbed of activity.
How does Stanford compete in football and basketball with the rigorous academic requirements, while a school like Notre Dame with similar standards struggles? Location, location, location.
Theoretically, athletes aren’t being paid to play in college. So you have to tap into the other resources. How is a school like Michigan or Indiana going to lure a kid from California, Florida or Texas to play at their school and move away from home?
Prestige? Please.
Most of these kids have only heard the name Bo Schembechler. He retired in 1989. To have any memory of watching Michigan during the end of his coaching career, you’d have to be at least 25.
Schembechler brought Michigan its prestige, it’s glory days. He compiled a 194-48-5 record in 21 seasons that included 13 Big Ten titles and despite not winning a national championship, finished in the top 10 16 times. It wasn’t under Lloyd Carr that Michigan captured the national title in 1997.
But like all good things, Michigan has struggled in recent years. Under Carr, the Wolverines went 122-40 with five Big Ten titles and that national title in ’97. Carr was 19-8 against top 10 ranked opponents and his teams were ranked in the top 25 for all but nine games during his tenure. Yet the administration grew restless that Michigan wasn’t winning national titles or beating Ohio State, so they hired Rich Rodriguez.
RichRod overhauled the system from the long-held pro-style to the shotgun spread, brought in his kind of players, paid little attention to defense and despite efforts to practice all the time, went 15-22 in three seasons. His .405 win percentage in the lowest in Michigan football history.
Is it all Rodriguez’ fault? Well, perhaps. You can’t go 0-6 against Michigan State and Ohio State and expect to keep your job.
But the times are a changing. Even Carr fell victim to the mid-major upset, as Appalachian State beat No. 5 Michigan in September of 2008. TCU, Boise State and Utah have all beaten teams that were “powers.” It happens.
Now Michigan searches for a new coach and you know they want Jim Harbaugh, a former Michigan quarterback, who’s done great things at Stanford.
As mentioned before, this all looks a little familiar. Reminds me a little of Indiana basketball and Steve Alford.
Indiana never formally offered Alford the job during two different coaching searches post-Bob Knight. At one time, it appeared Alford wanted it, but Alford learned what Harbaugh probably already knows: you can never live up to the expectations. Hometown boy comes home to return a once proud school to glory is the stuff of movies, not reality.
The reality is that the expectations in every fan’s mind can never be realized, not in the current era. Too much media coverage, not enough time. Twenty years ago, athletes didn’t want to leave Michigan and Indiana. They stayed three and four years and cared more about their school and the program than the weather.
It’s just not the same.
It took Indiana a decade, Mike Davis and Kelvin Sampson to realize that. It’s taken Tom Crean nearly three years to get the basketball program to a level that it’s at the very least competitive in every game again.
Coaches have changed too. Knight and Schembelcher are a rare breed in today’s sports. Most young athletes just won’t stay at a program and take the criticism and be pushed like that. That’s why coaches like Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll and Urban Meyer are so popular with players – they relate to them and are friendly with them, to the point they believe the coach likes them as a son.
When Rick Pitino took over the Boston Celtics in 1997, he famously said, “Larry Bird ain’t walkin’ through that door. Kevin McHale and Robert Parish aren’t walking through that door.” It was an attempt to lower the expectations, though the local media and fans killed him for it.
In essence, all Pitino tried to do was make people realize this wasn’t the 1960s or the 1980s and the NBA was a different league by the late 1990s. It was going to be harder to build a dynasty from the bottom.
The same has happened to college sports.
A lot of diversity, a lot of parity, a lot of hard-working talented kids at less prestigious schools causing upsets and firings, less committed studs at the prestigious schools who only stay for a few years means that it’s harder and harder for a program to become what Florida State, Penn State, Michigan, Miami and others used to be for so long.
Michigan may play in the biggest stadium in the country and be the all-time winningest college football program, but honestly, if you were a high school sophomore, junior or senior, would they even be in your top five?
That’s what Michigan should realize: we will “Hail to the Victors” sometimes, but it’s not going to happen every two or three seasons.
Face it, Bo Schembechler ain’t walking through that door.
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