This is the craziest Michigan football season anyone can remember. Five weeks ago, the team lost to Wisconsin on the road in the final minute of the game. Michigan had not lost to Wisconsin since 1994. However, Michigan then went to East Lansing and escaped with a three-point overtime victory against a favored Michigan State team. The next week brought Minnesota and the Battle for the Little Brown Jug. Michigan lost that game on a last-second field goal. Michigan had previously defeated Minnesota sixteen straight times dating back to 1986. Minnesota head coach Glen Mason's comments after the game help to put this dominance in perspective, "It's been 19 years since we've had the Brown Jug. We have some guys in the locker room right now who aren't 19 years old!"
Yet after the Minnesota loss, Michigan came back the next week to beat previously undefeated Penn State in one of the best finishes in Michigan Stadium history. Quarterback Chad Henne found wide receiver Mario Manningham in the back of the end zone on the game's final play to give this generation of Michigan fans their own Anthony Carter (45-yard TD vs. Indiana in 1979) or Mercury Hayes (15-yd TD vs. Virginia in 1995).
Michigan then went to Iowa and won that game on the final play in overtime, ending Iowa's 22-game home win streak against Big Ten opponents. It was Michigan's first back-to-back victories this season. Then on a nationally-televised Saturday night game, Michigan picked up its sixth win and bowl-eligibility against Northwestern. The streak of consecutive bowl games will now go to thirty-two straight. That's great news considering that a couple weeks ago bowl-eligibility was in serious doubt, but this is still an atypical season for the Wolverines. So what's the problem?
Michigan has had top-ten recruiting classes over the last five years so the talent is in the system. Top athletes have testified that the most important factors aside from personal ability are good coaching, high-level competition, quality facilities, and a strong support network. The popular sentiment this year is to blame the coaching staff. However, head coach Lloyd Carr has led the program to a national championship and the players have all said that coaching is not the reason why the team is so up and down. After the Minnesota loss, running back Mike Hart said "The coaches made good calls, we just couldn't execute them today."
Competition is not a factor as the Big Ten is one of the deepest conferences in the nation. Likewise, the facilities and the support network provided by the athletic department and the university are top-notch. If all these other factors are in place, and the talent is there, one has to wonder if there is something wrong with the players, thatdoesn't relate to their talent.
This kind of aberrational season has occurred with other historically-dominant programs in other sports. The 2002 North Carolina basketball team went 8-20, marking the first twenty-loss season in school history. That team missed the NCAA tournament, ending a streak of twenty-seven consecutive appearances. However, that team had little talent and serious coaching issues under second-year head coach Matt Doherty. The 2003 Tar Heels rebounded from that season but still finished 19-16 and missed the NCAA tournament again. This year's Michigan football team looks a lot like that North Carolina basketball team, which relied heavily upon freshmen Sean May, Raymond Felton, and Rashad McCant. Those players were all asked to do a lot on both offense and defense despite their youth. Similar pressure is falling on the shoulders of sophomores Chad Henne and Michael Hart.
The 2003 Tar Heels were one of the most unpredictable college basketball teams of recent memory. They had a ton of young talent, yet every game was an adventure. They had a number of bad losses against mediocre teams. They lost badly to Iona. They lost to Miami in overtime after going the last seventeen minutes of the game without a field goal. They barely beat Clemson at home, a team that has never won in Chapel Hill, only to lose to them at Clemson. Despite all of this, Carolina still managed to beat teams like Duke, Maryland, UConn, and Kansas that year. Does this sound like any other team you know?
The problem with young talent isn't that the players aren't good enough. The problem with relying on a lot of young talent is that you're also relying on that youth for leadership. In Management and Organizations we learned about the six leadership styles of emotional intelligence: coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching.
The pacesetting style of leadership is the one that is most successful for on-field leadership of high performing sports teams. The pacesetting leader's modus operandi is to set high standards for performance. The style in a phrase is, "Do as I do now." The style works best when you're trying to get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team. The overall impact on climate is negative, but probably more so in a business setting than a sports setting.
Think of some high performing sports teams. How often do you hear players on great teams talk about how a superstar was able to "pick up" a teammate? Great players are consistently able to do their own job as well as pick up their teammates when they fail to perform at the same level. Young talent can make amazing plays, but inexperience seems to prevent those players from always being able to perform and lead others at the same time.
Listen to what sophomore running back Mike Hart said after the loss to Minnesota, "We didn't execute; that's what it comes down to. Someone messed up on every play. I made the wrong cut, someone missed a block. We just didn't have 11 people on every play like we needed to." It sounds like even though Hart didn't play poorly, he wasn't able to overcome the mistakes of his teammates and help lead the team to victory.
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