10 Management Lessons From College Football
July 17, 2008 · Print This Article
Business and college football don’t frequently overlap–at least not on the field–but the men managing those teams are every bit as prone to pitfalls as you are, and being in the business of leading makes for more common ground than you may have anticipated. Just think, even more violent metaphors to use in that dull office banter!
10. Know When To Fold ‘Em
Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno were, at one time, the two best football coaches in the country, regularly competing for (and winning) national titles. But sometime in between the late 90s and now, these legends were seemingly killed and replaced by zombies that can only think about their next meal, instead of, say, NCAA compliance (Bowden) or getting out of the way of a speeding linebacker (Paterno). The lesson? You can’t always win, and it’s important to recognize when to step aside or bring in help–Coach Bowden has his successor on staff already, just waiting for the old coot to die.
9. You Only Have To Do One Thing Really Well
Most offensive coordinators will tell you that you have to have balance in order to have a good football team. And that may be true if they’re trying to get an NFL job, or attract players with a pro-style offense. But Navy (Navy! In wartime!) has been to 3 straight bowl games by having one of the worst passing attacks in football. AND one of the worst secondaries–future heroes, yes, but the Midshipmen in the defensive backfield are generally best described as “flammable.” Navy knows their strategy and what they can do–run, run, run, to protect that weak-ass defense–and they stick to it.
8. Building Poorly Isn’t Building At All
We’ve all witnessed the bubble economy before–remember the first dotcom explosion? If your business plan was in crayon it didn’t matter. The internet was going to make us all rich post haste. And then reality set in. The bubble breaking led to web boom 2 (with real business principles!), which helped prop up the housing bubble, which broke and sent our economy spiraling the toilet.
American business, meet Louisville football. As A I-AA squad in the 80s they had to give tickets away, but Howard Schnellenberger soon took control of the program and began laying a solid foundation–scheduling a home-and-home against Kentucky to keep talent in Louisville, and building a new stadium. Unfortunately, the ’solid foundation’ school of football hasn’t had a place in Louisville since, as Bobby Petrino, the coach responsible for taking the program to its greatest heights, seems to have had a thing for player with drug habits, an inclination to fight, or functional illiteracy. The result? The year after he leaves the team goes 6-6 with national championship talent, and 22 players quit or are asked to leave by the start of the this season.
7. Sometimes The Unpopular Hire Is The Best Hire
After Guy Morriss left the University of Kentucky for Baylor (only to end up fired and supposedly looking at a high school job in the bluegrass before ending up an assistant at D-II Kentucky State), the net for the coaching search was cast wide–fans campaigned for Steve Spurrier, Doug Williams was rumored to be buying a horse farm, and Bill Parcells was in the mix, with various parties asserting their either the deal was done or he was using a Kentucky contract to squeeze more out of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
Needless to say, none of those men ever cashed a paycheck from Kentucky; instead, out of options and badly burned by Parcells, AD Mitch Barnhart hired an old friend who had built Oregon’s program. Kentucky fans were not pleased, and became even more upset as he struggled to win more than three games in his first three years. And then, suddenly, he won two straight bowl games, beat the program’s biggest rival (Louisville), beat number one LSU, and got College Gameday to show up on campus. What happened? The unpopular, unknown (on the east coast) hire had a four-year plan to carefully rebuild. Even when it got tough, he stuck with his plan, and it paid off dramatically.
6. Your Original Strategy Will Only Take You So Far
On one hand, hitting a plateau is a good thing–you recognize that you’ve made it out of startup mode, or that you’ve achieved your goals for expansion. But what next?
If you’re like Mike Leach, you may not know. His Texas Tech Red Raiders have been the Big XII “it” team for several years now, thanks to incredible displays of offensive firepower. They just can’t seem to get over the twin peaks of Texas and Oklahoma, however, and that’s because Leach, evil pirate offensive mastermind that he is, doesn’t really care for this “defense” thing. Does he have a new quarterback every year that’s had years of maturing and experience in his system? Yes. Does he always have some of the fastest, sticky-handed receivers in the country? Yes. Does he pull his defensive players out of the band at random 20 minutes before kickoff? That is Texas A&M’s gig, but we’re saying yes to that, too. When you start to stagnate, bring a different strategy, and take your game to the next level.
Or, keep doing what you’re doing. Whichever.
5. You’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good
LSU in 2007 was the ultimate cracked out evil clown roller-coaster ride: storming back to beat Alabama, taking both Kentucky and Arkansas to two overtimes, and that little affair against Auburn where a field goal would have done, but Les Miles elected to go with a hail mary–without enough time for another play if it failed. Sound strategy? Rarely. A misuse of all that talent? Perhaps. Lucky? Oh, yes. But they won the national title. And in the end, that’s all that matters. You can be great and get a bad draw. Or you can just get lucky.
4. Name Recognition Means Dick
You may recall, prior to last year’s 2-9 abomination Notre Dame was actually in a lot of people’s Top 25s. Sure, it’ll be a rebuilding year, and there’s not really a quarterback, or an offensive line, but it would work out because they were Notre Dame. To put it in business terms, Notre Dame was doing their best impersonation of an American automaker assuming that the consumers would never desert them even though they had nothing ready in the way of high-gas-mileage vehicles they could actually sell. Only, substitute “customers” for “wins” and “shitty cars” for “talent.” If your comapny has a great reputation, that’s an excellent tool–but you have to keep that reputation up, or you’re doomed.
3. You Can Do Everything Right And Still Get F’d
This is the flip side of “I’d rather be lucky than good”–see, despite that massive bauble of bling above, Auburn wasn’t the 2004 national champs. That honor belongs to USC, despite their inferior record, and the Pac-10/SEC debate that we won’t launch on a business blog. How does this add up? Auburn got boned, plain and simple–they didn’t rank too high in the preseason, it cost them in the polls, and the computers punished them for it. The same thing can happen your team, as well–you can submit a perfect bid and miss out, or do all of your safety training and still have somebody get hurt. Just deal.
2. No Failure Is Permanent
The Horror. A two word-phrase that, to Michigan fans, recalls the beginning of the 2007 season, when Appalachian State came in to The Big House and beat the top-10 Wolverines, immediately followed by Oregon putting up 40 points in their own epic ass-kicking. Suffice to say, there were a lot of Michigan Men who wanted Lloyd Carr’s head on a platter NOW, because he clearly couldn’t make it to the end of the season. What did Carr do? Won eight straight and won his New Year’s Day bowl game aginst Florida and football messiah Tim Tebow. Your business can fail, in epic fashion–how many times have we heard Ford is going to take hundreds of millions in losses, and that Toyota is just waiting to snap them up?–but it’s never anything that you can’t come back from.
1. If It Seems Too Good To Be True, It Usually Is
For those of you not alive (or caring about football) in the 1980s, Southern Methodist was once a powerhouse program. They finished 1982 ranked number 2 in the nation, had the “Pony Express” backfield firing on all cylinders, and were in the national title mix every year.
And then they got caught paying their players. Whoops.
So, in 1987, SMU received the first-ever NCAA “death penalty,” which prevented the school from fielding a team that year, and caused them to shut down the 1988 season rather than play it entirely on the road. Looking back, it’s obvious–why would a small religious school in Dallas be able to accumulate the talent needed to be a title threat without cheating somehow? The business world is the same way. You can even stay in Texas for that example–a trip to Houston would allow you to stop by the old Enron HQ.
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