When Michigan hired Kyle Whittingham last December, the press release practically wrote itself. A program reeling from scandal, its head coach fired and then arrested, turned to a 66-year-old with 21 seasons at Utah, a reputation for integrity, and the personal discipline of a man who hasn't skipped a workout since the Carter administration. The phrase everyone used was "culture reset."
Five games in, the reset looks more like a computer frozen on the loading screen. Michigan is 3-2, 0-2 in the Big Ten for the first time since 1967, and fresh off losing in Minneapolis for the first time since 1977. The losses haven't come from being outclassed. They've come from penalties, turnovers, and the kind of mistakes that send a fan base reaching for the antacids.
So, is the reset sunk? I don't think so. But I think we were sold the wrong idea of what a reset is.
Three words get tossed around interchangeably whenever a team struggles: nature, culture, and character. They aren't the same thing. A team's nature is what it is: who's on the roster, what they're good at, what the system demands. Its culture is how it habitually operates, the standards nobody has to announce. Its character is who it proves to be when things get hard.
Michigan hired a man of character and expected character to produce culture. That's a reasonable bet. It's also a slow one.
Start with nature. Whittingham inherited a roster assembled by other coaches for other systems. His offensive coordinator ran a terrific offense at Utah, with Utah's players. In Ann Arbor, the offensive line has struggled, the run game has sputtered, and the quarterback is a gifted but very young player still learning not to throw the ball to the other team. No speech changes who's on the roster in October. That happens through recruiting and attrition, measured in years, not press conferences.
Then culture. Discipline isn't a value you install; it's a habit you build, one false start at a time. A good share of Michigan's penalties have been pre-snap, the purely avoidable kind. That's not a talent problem. It's a habits problem, and habits lag a leadership change the way a cargo ship lags its rudder. You turn the wheel, and for a while nothing seems to happen.
Here's the detail I find most telling. By the coach's own account, the defense has played well all season. Defense is Whittingham's lifelong specialty, where he spends his time and where his standards are felt most directly. The unit closest to the leader is the one that looks most like him. Culture doesn't spread by announcement. It spreads by proximity.
Which brings us to character, and the uncomfortable truth that the coach's character is not the team's. A leader's integrity is a seed, not a harvest. The athletic department could hire it. It couldn't install it in a hundred-plus young men by Labor Day.
The team's character is being formed right now: a two-game losing streak, a bye week, a grumbling fan base, and every columnist in the Midwest drafting the obituary. Teams don't find out who they are at 5-0. They find out at 3-2.
None of this guarantees Whittingham succeeds. Maybe the scheme doesn't fit. Maybe the talent isn't there. Five games is enough to worry and nowhere near enough to conclude.
But if you lead anything, whether a team, a department, or a small business, there's a lesson here. When we hire for character, we expect culture to show up on schedule. It doesn't. Culture moves at the speed of repetition, starts closest to the leader, and has to push against whatever the organization already is.
The real question for Michigan isn't whether the reset has worked. It's whether the people inside it will keep repeating the right things long enough for it to start.
Ask me again in November. Better yet, ask me in two years.
For the true Michigan fan, much of this matters little. We just want to get back to our winning ways. We lead OSU and ‘Bama by more than 30 games and we must get back to growing the distance to keep our title as the “winningest team in football!”
Dr. Swope is a Professor of Economics and teaches Sports Economics at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College
