College Presidents Can Learn One Important Thing From NLF Coach Dan Campbell
I spent last weekend with about 300 fellow college presidents at an annual conference hosted by the Council of Independent Colleges. It’s an event I look forward to each year. Being a college president can be an isolating and strange job at times, so I’ve found it encouraging to connect with others who truly understand the role.
However, the tone of our gatherings recently has become increasingly negative. This year was no different. The three main things we talked about were higher ed’s financial challenges, campus discourse and artificial intelligence. In other words, it felt like what we did for the weekend was talk about bad news, bad news and more bad news.
These three topics represent nothing less than existential threats to higher education itself. “Financial challenges” refers to the broken business model and subsequent budget shortfalls affecting virtually every college and university, including Ivy League schools like Brown. “Campus discourse” refers to the rapidly deteriorating state of free speech, as discussions on seemingly any topic have become increasingly rancorous and violent. And of course, “artificial intelligence” refers to the emerging technologies which, at least according to some, threaten to make traditional education models obsolete or irrelevant, or both.
It’s not that we shouldn’t discuss these matters; the problem lies in our tone. Despair and gloom dominated every conversation and discussion. Overall, the weekend felt a bit like one long field trip to the morgue. Some potential solutions were floated, but the underlying sentiment was one of mourning. “Pretty soon, all of us may be out of a job.”
There was but one bright spot in this dark landscape, and it shone all the more brilliantly because of the contrast. It came on Sunday night, when I gathered with a few of my other Michigan-based peers to watch the Detroit Lions game. That was the first time all weekend I remembered something. I remembered what it was like to feel hope.
For those who don’t follow the NFL, allow me to point something out: in recent history, the terms “Detroit Lions” and “hope” have not belonged in the same sentence. The Lions are one of only four teams to have never reached the Super Bowl, and in the vast majority of seasons, they’ve been nowhere close. That’s not to say that they haven’t achieved other distinctions. For example, in 2008 they became the first NFL team to finish the entire season without a single win. This helped them to also set a new NFL record for most consecutive road losses (26), breaking the previous league record of 24 games, which they themselves had set earlier that same decade. Once again, the Lions had outdone themselves.
But the strangest thing about the Lions is the uncanny way in which they have always seemed to embody the spirit of Detroit as a whole. During the 1950s, the Lions were dominant, winning three league titles prior to the Super Bowl era. Meanwhile, American auto manufacturers produced 80% of the world’s cars, and Motown Records — named in honor of Detroit’s nickname, Motor Town — introduced the world to artists like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Supremes. Detroit was quickly becoming one of the world’s great cities, leading both industry and culture, and it had a football team to match. The marriage was complete when the Lions were purchased by the Ford family, cementing the team’s identity as a symbol of the city itself.
It is little wonder, then, that as Detroit’s fortunes shifted, so too did the fate of the Lions. In the 1960s, Japanese auto-makers began mass producing more fuel-efficient vehicles, cutting into the profits of Ford and GM. This led to the layoffs of many factory workers who had flocked to the city during the industry’s boom. Those factories were disproportionately African American, exacerbating the ever-present burden of segregation and police brutality. In 1967, after yet another unprovoked police raid, the city erupted into five days of looting and violence. When the dust had settled, over 40 were dead, thousands were injured, and Detroit would never be the same. Many of the city’s businesses packed up and moved elsewhere, including Motown Records, which moved to Los Angeles in the early ’70s.
Through it all, the Lions started to lose, and lose badly. As the city’s slump continued to deepen over the next four decades, so too did the Lions’. Fittingly, the two reached their nadir simultaneously. In the same year that the Lions became the first NFL team to complete a winless season, GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, with Ford narrowly escaping the same fate. Both the city and the team had fallen to the bottom of the heap.
But then, the winds started to change. Coming out of bankruptcy, Ford and GM showed renewed energy and vision, and began establishing themselves as innovative leaders in electric vehicles and global markets. The Lions, for their part, took some time to catch up, but signs of life began to emerge as early as 2020. That was the year that Sheila Ford Hamp — the great-granddaughter of Henry Ford — took over leadership of the team. Lest anyone feared a laissez-faire approach, Hamp quickly proved otherwise. In her first year, she fired both the team’s GM and head coach. At the same time. In the middle of the season.
Enter Dan Campbell, who Hamp announced as the Lions’ new head coach on the same day that the United States was installing a new president. Her pick was a surprising one, to say the least. In the Moneyball-era of professional sports, with the emphasis on number-crunching and complex strategies, Campbell was something of a dinosaur — a 6’5″, 265lb tight end who grew up on a cattle ranch. This impression was only confirmed at his first press conference, when he said this:
“This team is going to take on the identity of this city. This city’s been down and it’s found a way to get up. We’re gonna get knocked down, but on the way up, we’re going to bite a kneecap off … Before long, we’re going to be the last one standing.”
In response, most people just laughed. They kept laughing as Campbell went on to lose 80% of his first 24 games, fairing no better than the coaches who had preceded him. Then, after a particularly devastating loss, Hamp held a press conference, emphatically declaring that she still believed in Campbell’s leadership. She had hope. So did Campbell. His response to those who laughed: “One day we’ll be laughing at everybody else. Our time is coming.”
That same week, Campbell made some bold and difficult decisions: he fired one of his most beloved assistant coaches and decided to take over most play calling. The Lions have won 80% of the games they’ve played since, going 35-9 over the last 44 games.
So, as I sat there last Sunday night with my fellow college presidents and watched Campbell make good on his promise, I couldn’t help but notice the marked difference between him and us: his defiant hope, and our resigned despair. Yes, the problems we face are very real, but so too were the problems he had faced. I wonder whether Campbell would make a better college president than any of us. To be sure, he doesn’t know the first thing about running a college. But he does seem to know a thing or two about what leadership requires.
The most important quality a leader must have is hope. At the end of the day, those who have the most hope will have the most influence. America’s college and university system is in the midst of great upheaval. If we want to save it, we need leaders with defiant hope. Everybody gets knocked down; the only question is whether you are going to get back up.