Harbaugh for President

First appeared on September 3rd, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

If Jim Harbaugh had been your First Grade teacher he would have told you to stop crying and get back to work. At recess he would have told everyone Billy can cross the Monkey Bars faster than you and at lunch he’d have made it perfectly clear trading your corn for another No Bake Cookie will only make you fat. His is a world devoid of Band-Aids and hugs.

And far away from the bright lights of Ann Arbor, a line forms before a weary coach, plastic smile pasted on. He shakes every hand of his little team, congratulating them on their 13-0 loss. Later, somewhere beyond left field, a Mini-Van Mom passes out juice boxes and treats she put together with love. Individual Ziplock baggies, each labeled in Sharpie because Tommee doesn’t like pretzels and Earin likes extra trail mix and don’t forget Mikel has a wheat allergy so he’ll most likely need a block of cheese or maybe a coloring book.

And as the little warriors inhale their snack, the coach mumbles something about growth and how proud he is of the effort they gave despite losing every game. All this before doling out the exact same trophy to everyone, including Rico who was the only kid to reach base or record an out or show any tangible signs of improvement all season.

If Jim Harbaugh were that Pee-Wee coach he would have told everyone to take a long hard look at Rico. “If you want to win games you need to work as hard as Rico. If you want to win games you’ll put down the game controller and play catch with your dad. And if you don’t have a dad, you’ll throw a ball off the roof of your house and catch it. And if you don’t have a house then you’ll ask one of the people living under the bridge with you to play catch.”

Jim Harbaugh would blast his team for losing. Blast them for not being better, not working hard enough. And he would do this because he knows every second grader in India and China wants to bury the U.S. and the more we hand out trophies and pat people on the back for losing, the faster it will happen. That’s why I’m asking Harbaugh to resign his position at Michigan and run for President.

What this country needs is more honesty. We need to be able to look others in the eye and tell them exactly how we feel and, when necessary, tell them maybe they can find a little room for improvement after all. And this includes everyone from your seven year old to the guy pretending to be a sports columnist in the local paper.

I’m no expert on motivation, just ask my wife, my boss, my parents or my kids. Still, it doesn’t take a professor boasting hours of research, countless articles published and dozens of agonizingly dry speeches given to recognize if you constantly tell someone how great they are, they tend to see no reason for improvement.

As President, Harbaugh would make loyalty, hard work and discipline the foundation of every child’s education. Anyone caught whining about political correctness or asking why their daughter only got one smiley face on her paper when Johnny got four would be given a pair of Dockers and a one way ticket to Siberia.

A history of demanding perfection and grinding on those around him will follow Harbaugh to Ann Arbor. And often, despite success, that history has a history of leading to his demise (see 49ers, San Francisco). So while Harbaugh appears ready for Ann Arbor, the million dollar question remains, is Ann Arbor ready for Harbaugh?

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

It's been 40 years already and has anything really changed?

First appeared on September 30, 2009
in The Lebanon Reporter

Some things happen only once in a lifetime. Things like true love, Haley’s Comet and apparently Indiana winning a football game in Ann Arbor. Yet as Freshman running back Darius Willis was streaking up the sideline during Saturday’s fourth quarter, the crimson red heart of Hoosier nation surged with the belief that history was in the making. 85 yards later Willis scored giving Indiana a lead late in a game they had not won since 1967.
The last time Indiana beat Michigan in Ann Arbor LBJ was president and we hadn’t visited the moon yet. The last time Indiana beat Michigan in Ann Arbor gas was 33 cents a gallon, Super Bowl I had just been played and Charlie Chaplin released his final film.
In the end it was not meant to be as Wolverine Freshman Tate Forcier wrote another chapter in what, early on, looks to be a storybook career. To be clear, Michigan won a game they had no business winning and Indiana lost a game they had no business losing. But ultimately it was a game lost on the national radar for there were far too many upsets Saturday for anyone to spend much time talking about what almost was in Ann Arbor.
Despite this, two things should come about as a result of Saturday’s outcome. For Michigan, one can only assume the insane “Wolverine National Championship” talk we heard after they found a way to beat Notre Dame three weeks ago is gone, surely. For Indiana more may come from losing this game than one might expect. Televised on ESPN 2, the game reached far more households than ESPN U or the Big Ten Network combined. This being said, Indiana having such a dramatic performance on a stage as glamorous as the Big House on such a network as ESPN 2 will go further in recruiting than any 3-0 start against two MAC teams and Eastern Kentucky ever could.
Was it one game? Yes. Do we know what kind of team Bill Lynch really has on his hands? No. Will we find out next week when they play Ohio State? Most likely. But forget wins for the moment, IU needs more performances like this to both energize their fan base and attract recruits. Would it have gone further to win Saturday? Obviously. Does it go further losing by three than the 65-0 we’ve so painfully grown accustomed to? I’m not going to dignify that with a response.
For one bright Saturday afternoon Indiana’s football program caught lightning in a bottle. They came in a program ranked as one of the worst in the conference by the experts and, except for two plays in the first half defensively, they never once looked like they didn’t belong on the field with Michigan. A game that historically resembles a boxer working the heavy bag turned out to be every bit Ali v. Frazier, Tyson v. Holyfield or Nancy Pelosi v. anyone with a pulse. Does the game get Lynch a ticket out of the leaking lifeboat he and Charlie Weis appear to be trying to keep afloat? Not quite yet. And now, as far as plugging the leak goes, the boys are going to have to get real creative after Weis needed a fourth quarter drive to beat Purdue and Lynch threw their best hope (chewing gum) out of his mouth in disgust on Saturday. Strange as it may sound however, the loss to Michigan does get Lynch one step closer to his goal of building a program and, oh yeah- keeping his job at the same time.