By Jake Riepma97.1 The Ticket
About a month ago a Michigan fan told me if the Wolverines swept Michigan State in the regular season in basketball, it would make him feel better about the disappointing ending of Michigan's 2018 football season.
I was mind-blown with this take. I couldn't fathom how someone could rationalize this concept. Fan is short for fanatic, and the definition of a fanatic is a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal. I suppose that is the only explanation for this Michigan fan's perspective.
Fast forward a couple of months, and this preposterous take has aged even more poorly. While I'm not necessarily keen on the football-to-basketball program comparison, there are certainly some parallels to draw between Jim Harbaugh and Tom Izzo, with the former learning from the latter.
Tom Izzo and the Spartans defeating Mike Krzyzewski and the vaunted Duke Blue Devils to earn a trip to Minneapolis embodies what it means to win when the lights are shinning brightest. Harbaugh's deficiencies in big games for his entire career at Michigan should leave Wolverine fans questioning whether U of M football will ever return to national relevancy equivalent to the success the Michigan State basketball team has achieved.
I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but looking closer at the numbers further drives home this point.
Izzo has consistently won the big games over a 20-plus-year span. Sure, he has his fair share of ugly blemishes on his resume in the form of early tournament exits by Middle Tennessee State and Syracuse in recent memory, but the entire body of work is overwhelmingly impressive: eight Final Fours, nine regular season Big Ten titles, six conference tournament championships, and a 27-14 record against Michigan.
Maybe it's an apples-to-oranges comparison given the nature of the two sports, but Harbaugh is definitely not on pace to achieve these types of accomplishments. He is, however, slated to take the Michigan football team on yet another glamorous trip abroad – this time to South Africa, which I've heard is the mecca of all football practice locations. I can't recall the last time the Spartans and Tom Izzo jetted off for an international vacation. Instead, Izzo is focused on developing players and instilling a hard-nosed mindset of toughness and passion into each of his players. And it's obviously working – 'Michigan State toughness' and 'Tom Izzo rebounding' are terms used by Texas Tech head coach Chris Beard – the ultimate sign of flattery.
Each coach has his or her own style they believe to be most effective, but the elaborate trips, rap music videos, sleepovers and sideline antics from Harbaugh don't seem to be translating into winning big games. Izzo's approach has yielded much more favorable results over a long period of time, and perhaps Harbaugh should take note. Of course, if there was a perfect, cookie cutter approach, every coach would abide by that methodology. But there's not. It's all about getting the most out of your team, and Izzo has done that, while Harbaugh has not - with the 2018 Wolverines and the 2019 Spartans being the most recent examples.
