Before I was a college history major, I was a baseball stat geek poring over Bill James books in high school. I learned to lean on probabilities, value sound process over unreliable results, and understand that small-sample outliers almost always regress to the mean.
History teaches many of the same lessons in a different way. There’s one particular tenet, however, that doesn’t always line up with math: history repeats itself, particularly when we don’t learn from it.
Michigan football is doing its best to dispel my belief in math. Here’s an incomplete list of one-score defeats since Jim Harbaugh took over as head coach in 2015. I can guarantee you that the odds of losing every one of these was damn near negligible:
2021 Michigan State: took 30-14 lead with 6:47 left in third quarter, missed more ways to put this game away than I care to enumerate, also had a touchdown overturned on replay evidence one could argue wasn’t conclusive;
2019 Penn State: won total yardage 417-283, dropped potential game-tying touchdown pass in fourth quarter;
2017 Michigan State: couldn’t drive to win the game down 14-10 in fourth quarter, John O’Korn was QB because Purdue broke Wilton Speight’s back the previous week;
2016 Orange Bowl: Michigan clawed back from a game-long deficit to go ahead 30-27 with 1:57 to go, then allowed a 66-yard kickoff return to put Florida State in position for the winning touchdown;
2016 Ohio State: the spot was debatable and frankly gets too much attention, but the missed pass interference calls and Michigan’s inability to stop a dead-to-rights Curtis Samuel in the backfield in overtime unquestionably turned this game;
2016 Iowa: Michigan blows a 10-0 lead in part because of a safety, regains a 13-11 edge in the fourth, intercepts CJ Beathard with 1:49 to play, then goes three-and-out in 26 seconds to set up Iowa’s game-winning field goal as time expires;
2015 Michigan State: trouble with the snap.
Math looks at this as a near-impossible run of bad luck. It attempts to contextualize the inexplicable. Sure, Michigan lost another heartbreaker, but by the numbers, they should’ve won!
History, on the other hand, tells us this is what we should expect. May I direct your attention back to the bulleted list? No? You hate it? Fair enough.
Football will force you to understand, rightfully, that you don’t know a damn thing. Even Alabama and Ohio State are only inevitable on a large-enough scale; sometimes they trip up against Texas A&M or Purdue, teams that don’t stand a chance on paper.
Speaking of the Aggies, this is how Athlon graded what they viewed as the top coaching hires of the 2018 offseason, and how those hires have fared:
Scott Frost, Nebraska, A+: Frost is 15-26 (10-22 Big Ten) midway through his fourth year at his alma mater. While the talent level is up, the Huskers aren’t producing improving results at 3-6 (1-5) this season. Frost is excited about a fifth season he may not get to coach.
Dan Mullen, Florida, A: Won double digit-games in each of his first two seasons, then went 8-4 last year, and now sits at 4-4 (2-4 SEC). Mullen inexplicably still employs defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and is catching serious heat for blowing off a recruiting question after losing to a Georgia squad that’s kicking his ass on the recruiting trail (and, now, on the field).
Chip Kelly, UCLA, A: 15-25 (13-18 Pac-12) and very much on the hot seat even though the Bruins have finally crested .500 (at 5-4). If they finish that way, it’d be Kelly’s first winning season in Los Angeles. They probably won’t because they’ve blown every opportunity to capitalize on USC’s down times.
Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M, A-: While the 32-12 overall record looks nice, especially among this group, the 20-10 mark in the SEC takes a lot of the shine off, especially given Fisher’s absurd $90 million extension that takes his contract through 2031. Losing back-to-back games to Arkansas and Mississippi State before stunning ‘Bama is a fair summation of his maddening tenure.
Willie Taggart, Florida State, A-: Fired nine games into the 2019 season with a record of 9-12 (6-9 ACC). Now the head coach of Florida Atlantic.
Joe Moorhead, Mississippi State, B+: Fired after two seasons when he couldn’t keep the team at Mullen’s previous standard, which was historically good for MSU. Now Oregon’s offensive coordinator.
Chad Morris, Arkansas, B+: Fired two games before the conclusion of the 2019 season after going winless in 14 SEC games. Spent 2020 as Gus Malzahn’s offensive coordinator at Auburn before the staff was fired, now is the head coach at Allen (TX) High School.
Kevin Sumlin, Arizona, B+: Went 5-7, 4-8, and then got mega-fired after Arizona’s 0-5 season was capped by a 70-7 loss to Herm Edwards’ Arizona State in 2020.
Jeremy Pruitt, Tennessee, B: Climbed from 5-7 to 8-5 before falling back to 3-7 in 2020. Tennessee so wanted to rid themselves of Pruitt that they conducted an internal investigation to uncover their own recruiting violations and used that evidence to fire Pruitt with cause. He’s a “senior defensive assistant” with the New York Giants while mulling a lawsuit over his UT buyout.
Steve Campbell, South Alabama, B: Fired with a 6-18 record against the Sun Belt in three seasons.
The first coach to hit was Louisiana’s Billy Napier at #11. What were the odds that all ten coaches above would either be fired or in serious jeopardy of it by 2021? Maybe a bit better than Michigan losing all those tight games but probably not by much.
The wholesale disaster of the 2018 coaching class may be unusual. Coaching hires as a crapshoot isn’t, though: Jim Harbaugh leads off the 2015 list, Lance Leipold (Buffalo, moved “up” to Kansas) is fifth, and Paul Chryst is ninth, but there are also the likes of Gary Andersen (#2), Tom Herman (#3), Jim McElwain (#6), Mike Riley (#8), and Mike Bobo (#10) in the top ten.
Chad Morris, whom you may remember from being a big Athlon miss in 2018, was a hit at #4 on the 2015 list for his three-year SMU tenure. He went from moving up to an SEC head job to coaching high school ball in three years.
I don’t know.
I don’t know what to do with a coach who’s so clearly better than his two previous predecessors, brought the program back to the verge of Big Ten titles, and found a way to lose every game that’d instill faith he can get all the way there.
I don’t know what Michigan has to do to break this run of bad luck and worse errors. My head says it’ll turn at some point, that there’s too much talent for them not to at least fluke their way to a close rivalry win, that math is real and eventually corrects course.
My gut sides with history. It’s bracing for Harbaugh to find a new way to lose to Ohio State. It’s been punched too many times to do otherwise.
Michigan is almost certainly locked into at least another year of Harbaugh. My head says he’s easily earned that opportunity by showing flexibility with his approach, changing much of the coaching staff, and having that rewarded with a greatly improved team this season.
My gut can’t help but produce a flurry of butterflies at the thought of another year of this. Again, it’s all the punches. They’re hard to forget or contextualize, and at some point the context stops mattering, because punches are damaging whether or not they were fortunate to hit their target.