Pride Before The Fall

Many of you know that I am a huge Ohio State football fan. I was born in Columbus while my Dad was in dental school there and I think I was dropped on my head, so I'm a little brain damaged about the Buckeyes.

Tomorrow they will play Michigan for the 105th time. It is the greatest rivalry in sports. This year is a little strange because Michigan is struggling and has the most losses (8) they have ever had in program history. The Buckeyes have also under-achieved this year but at nine wins and two losses, they are heavy favorites (20 1/2 points).

I have talked to many Michigan fans and a few Ohio State fans who think this is going to be a blowout and that Ohio State is going to win big. I don't feel this way. I hope they are right, but I believe it is going to be much closer than everyone says. In this rivalry game, anything can happen.

I remember in 1996, Ohio State was beating everyone by an average of something like 30 points a game. They appeared unstoppable. That year they were an 18 point favorite over Michigan. Michigan won.

In the mid to late 80s, Earle Bruce was coaching his last game for the Buckeyes and they were heavy underdogs playing in Ann Arbor. Ohio State won.

In 1969, Bo Schembechler was coaching the Wolverines in his first Ohio State, Michigan game and his team was a huge underdog. This was perhaps Woody Hayes' best Buckeye team he had ever coached. Michigan won.

In this game, the record books can be thrown out. Anyone can win. That's one of the reasons this is such a great rivalry. I hope the Buckeyes aren't too sure of themselves!

The Bible even weighs in on this topic in Proverbs 16:18:

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Go Bucks!

Listening Leadership

I'm a believer that you can learn things from anyone--even from your enemy. As a result, I am reading Bo Schembechler's book on leadership, Bo's Lasting Lessons: The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless Fundamentals of Leadership. Many of you know that I am a die-hard Buckeye, so this is a stretch for me--although it's not as difficult as you might think, because Bo actually started his career as an assistant to Woody Hayes at Ohio State.

In any event, last night I read something interesting. Bo shared how on Tuesdays and Wednesdays before a game, much of his time was spent in long meetings with his assistants devising a game plan for the coming game. He gave explicit instructions to his assistant that nobody could interrupt them, not even a phone call from the president of the university...or even the president of the United States!

There was one exception to this however. If any player, whether they were a star player or a lowly walk-on, came to see him, she was to interrupt the meeting immediately so that he could talk with them. He said, you need to take care of those on your team and when you do this they will play much harder for you.

This is impressive to me. I can see that I need to do a better job of this in many areas of my life, especially with those in my family. Thanks for the lesson Bo!

Leading When Things Aren't Going Your Way

In Bo’s Lasting Lessons, authors Bo Schembechler and John Bacon relate a story from Bo’s early days coaching. He learned a lesson about leading when the heat is on from his boss from his boss and mentor Ara Parseghian that he carried with him the rest of his life. Here's that excerpt:

The following season, 1956, I left Doyt [Perry] and Bowling Green—with his blessings—to become an assistant for Ara Parseghian at Northwestern University.

Ara was not a big ego guy, he was great with players, he was a wonderful motivator, and he understood the game so well he could come up with things no one else had thought of. He was probably the most imaginative coach I’d ever seen, always adapting his plays to his players instead of the other way around like most coaches do. Heck, we used to call his practice field “The Laboratory,” because that’s where he’d try every trick in the book on Mondays, testing this and experimenting with that, just to see what might work that Saturday.

Before Ara arrived, Northwestern hadn’t had a winning season in five years, but in his first year Northwestern went 4-4-1, and everyone was encouraged. But in Ara’s second season, 1957, everything went to hell. We lost nine games—every single game we played! For a coach, that’s just about the most difficult situation you have to face.

We could keep our opponents down to one or two touchdowns, but we couldn’t score for our lives. And I was working with the offense!

Losing creates all kinds of other problems too—poor morale, nagging injuries, lackluster effort. The players were spending more time in the PR office than in the weight room. It was just a mess. I never experienced anything like that in all my years of coaching—and thank God for that.

I learned an awful lot from Ara in my first year at Northwestern, but I learned a heckuva lot more from him that second season, when he lost ‘em all. And what I learned was how a real leader leads when things aren’t going his way.

Ara treated the staff as though we were winning every game. He never gave the slightest inclination that we were the problem. He not once blamed any assistant or any player fro any loss we suffered that year. NOT ONCE.

“Stick with it, guys, and we’ll get through this,” he’d tell us. “We’re going to be okay.” We all kept busting our butts for Ara, working past midnight, doing everything we could to get that guy a victory.

I’m not saying there wasn’t some bitching among the players. When you’re losing every game, every player thinks he deserves more playing time. But I promise you this: There was a whole lot less bitching on that team than I’ve heard on teams that won half their games—and there was absolutely no, but no, bickering among the coaches.

To read the rest including how Ara led with integrity, go here.