Building a Team vs. Building a Program

In the current age of college football there has been a lot of talk about the transfer portal, NIL and a world where every player is a free agent available to the highest bidder. That has created varying approaches for coaches to build rosters and teams.

It has taken on the look of Major League Baseball. Some teams assemble a lineup of free-agent superstars. Others use homegrown talent developed in a system that builds and bonds players to the team and to one another.

But where college football differs from baseball is the incredible coordination among 11 players that is needed on every single play. The level of consistency and precision in execution to reach a championship level is very high. It’s not as simple as signing and plugging in a pitcher and a DH and a power-hitting outfielder that can jump in right away. 

On the offensive line alone, variable reactions on each play happening in close quarters demand instinctive, instantaneously adjustable choreography among massive men battling other massive men.

To that end, the approach to a big influx of transfers creating a championship team in one year is a lot harder than you would think. 

Last year for Michigan State, a group of transfers fed a dramatic improvement jumping from a 2-5 record in the COVID-impacted 2020 year to an 11-2 record in 2021. Hailed as a lesson in roster management, they built a squad that was close to being a championship team. Close. 

This year, they have fallen back in the pack and the temporary glow of last year’s team has faded. The challenge will be to weave a string of successful teams into a consistent program that contends annually for the division and conference title. 

Coaches are always looking ahead to the next practice, the next game, the next year. But the coaches who win over time are thinking two or three steps ahead to build the framework and attitude of the program. Those coaches anticipate the program’s needs beyond just putting together a highly-ranked recruiting class. A lot of people can assemble a talented class of players that impresses the recruiting media.

The enduring coach understands that assembling talent that fits and works within your program’s identity will at times run counter to what the recruiting media and fans on social media think you should be doing. The same goes for the free agency transfer portal market that opens in a few weeks.

High-level player and team development is what separates championship teams from contenders and it is what gets the most out of the talent that you have. Just this season Alabama’s Nick Saban was asked about a tough loss and he said “At times we had guys more focused on winning rather than on the things that allow you to win.” 

That is the difference between building a team versus building a program. The great programs have consistent core concepts and an identity that a coach instills in players over time. It does not happen overnight by outbidding other schools for a recruit or a transfer.

Love him or hate him, Jim Harbaugh seems to have turned a corner last year and this year with the Michigan program. Their players have bought into the old Bo Schembechler adage “The Team, The Team, The Team.” They look like a team that genuinely likes each other and has fun playing all phases of the game with a defined identity. The team’s no-nonsense toughness reflects Harbaugh. 

Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin, Jim Tressel at Ohio State, Nick Saban at Alabama and Kirby Smart at Georgia all had or have similar approaches to building a program identity across years that resulted in championship teams.

For Harbaugh, the journey in Ann Arbor took time and included some fits and starts. But its lasting impact was apparent when they finally got over the hump against Ohio State last year.

After that game, Ohio State talked about getting out-toughed by Michigan and made a commitment to exceed that toughness. It’s not often that you see someone at OSU tip their hat to “That Team Up North.” But Michigan’s identity was back to the days of Bo and Lloyd Carr.

But as Harbaugh and any other coach build programs, they face different challenges. 

The old-school college football fans worry about how NIL and free agency will impact the game’s integrity. Younger fans think the answer to their school’s prayers resides with the next transfer or recruiting class.

They’re both wrong.

As one coach told me after a losing season with a roster that included a number of high-profile recruits, “We got a bunch of guys who liked being recruited more than they liked doing the tough things required to play football.” 

Because in football, more than any other game, success over time requires a program identity with a toughness and attitude that you relish doing the daily difficult things to ensure success. Mentally, you have to understand your teammates’ roles and trust one another to do those things when the lights come on, when you are aching and tired. That takes time.

Fans of college football should understand in an impatient environment that the quick fix of putting one team together with a new coach or transfers may work in the short term. But over time in football, enduring consistency occurs only by building a program’s foundations on rock solid team-first ground that brings diverse players together in common cause.  

Joe Paterno used to talk toughness to his team all the time. “In a big game against a great opponent, sometime in that game you’ve got make them say ‘Ouch’.” That was echoed in a team meeting when he defined football’s truisms: “Largest Truths of the game:–Conditioning, Spartanism, defense and violence—as distinct from  Brutality.”

In spite of all the game’s changes with transfers, NIL and new schemes, those largest truths of the game remain. Those truths are how strong programs are developed to stand out amid a world of tempting quick fixes.