ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú

Coach John Harbaugh
Things aren't always going to go the way you expect them to go in life, you know. As a matter of fact, sometimes they're going to go way better. They're going to go way better. Things are going to happen to you, they're so good you can't even believe they're happening to you. You know, you're it's like your head is being anointed with oil, you know. It's like this is incredible. It's going to go the other way sometimes too. But don't discount the fact that you list of great possibilities out there, things can happen that you didn't dream of. I promise you.

President Greg Crawford
Hello, I'm Greg Crawford, President of ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University, and welcome to "In Such a Place," the podcast where we explore the future of higher education and the vital role colleges and universities play in shaping our world. ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉúhip is shaped by experience, challenges, and the responsibility of guiding others through moments that matter most. Joining us today is Coach John Harbaugh, ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University alumnus, member of the ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University Cradle of Coaches, and one of the most accomplished and respected leaders in professional football, now in his new role as head coach of the New York Giants, Coach Harbaugh enters a new chapter after 18 years with the Baltimore Ravens. Today we explore what it means to build and sustain a winning culture, how leadership evolves over time, and what lessons emerge when we think about leadership beyond the game itself. Coach, it's wonderful to have you here on the show today. Welcome back to campus.

Coach John Harbaugh
Thanks, President Crawford. Great to be back. Great to be with you on this beautiful campus.

President Greg Crawford
So every leadership journey starts somewhere, and for you, of course, what role did ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University play in shaping your path?

Coach John Harbaugh
Just foundational, you know, college, as you said, higher education, all those things are so meaningful, and it's meaningful from an academic perspective. And I had great teachers and great professors, and we were challenged, and we talked about stuff. I was political science, so we were talking about all the events of the day, and it was, I was really, it kind of got me inspired to start thinking about things differently, for sure. But even beyond that, I think it's more than that. You know, it's the challenges you face, it's the relationships that you build, it's the connections, the friendships, the lessons that you learn. You know, you go through tough times, maybe things don't always go your way, and you've got to find a way to fight through it anyway, and you're kind of on your own for the first time, right. All these things challenge you, and they transform you, and they basically bridge you into the next part of your life, which is when you're out on your own, and that's a great thing. ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú was great for that. ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú is, it's just one of those places that, in my mind, is college, you know? It epitomizes what that college experience is supposed to be about it's challenging, it's tough, but it's also caring. ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú cares about you. Great people went to school here, made great friends here, amazing professors who I'm grateful for. You know, I'd like to go back and thank them. You know, you don't get a chance to do that all the time, you know. So now, hey, thank you, all you professors. But yeah, it's ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú's a very special place.

President Greg Crawford
Tell us where you grew up, and then why ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú when you're getting out of high school there and choosing got college.

Coach John Harbaugh
That's a great question. Well, my dad is a football coach, you know. So, we, my brother, and my dad, my sister, and my mom, were Ohio people. They grew up, they were Ohio people. My dad was a high school coach. He's actually in Eaton, right up the road here for one year.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my godness.

Coach John Harbaugh
One time won a championship at Eaton High School, you know, and at Xenia High School over in Dayton. So we knew all about Ohio football. It was part of our house growing up, and ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú was a part of that, you know. My dad and mom met at Bowling Green. My dad played football at Bowling Green. My mom was a cheerleader at Bowling Green. So we knew all about the Mid-American Conference. My dad was coaching at Michigan the last seven years as I went into my senior in high school for seven years, we were around Bo Schembechler, you know.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my goodness!

Coach John Harbaugh
You've heard of him, right?

President Greg Crawford
Exactly.

Coach John Harbaugh
Yeah, Bo.

President Greg Crawford
He's got a statue down there.

Coach John Harbaugh
He's got a statue down there, right across. We're looking at each other, you know, every single day. So Bo was our idol, he was my dad's boss. We were around Bo all the time, so I knew all about ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú. I knew about, and when, when I went in the 70s, when I was in high junior high and high school, ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú was a top 10 football program. Oh yeah, Sherman Smith was the quarterback. Oh my goodness, they were in the bowl games, they beat Florida, they beat Georgia, they beat South Carolina in bowl games. My dad said ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú football is the football, is the ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú football, there is no other ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú football. So for me, I'd have a chance to be recruited by Tom Reed and come to ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú was a great, great, great opportunity, is a great honor. I mean, I was, I was privileged and proud to have a chance to come play football, ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú, and go to school here.

President Greg Crawford
You tell us, maybe one example of either your classroom experience or your student experience on the ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú campus that plays a role in what you do today as head coach.

Coach John Harbaugh
Well, yeah, I guess there's so many things, I think back to a political science, my very first year, the dean of the political science, legendary dean of the political science department at the time, over there in Harrison Hall, I was in a class, there's about 200 people in there, you know, and it was kind of overwhelming, and I was young, I was still 17 years old, sitting in the back of the auditorium. They were having kind of a back and forth about politics and issues of the day, and I got the courage, about second or third week, to say something to give an opinion on something from the back of the room, and I stood up and I said what I thought, you know, kind of question about one of the political topics, and this really smart guy just turned on me and just started laying into me, you know, like you don't know anything, and just started ripping my argument to shreds, you know, and I'm just like, oh man, because I don't know anything. So I sat down, and the professor, the professor, when the student was finished, he said, I think he said, John, he goes, you just made a very good point, and what you don't understand, and he made the point back, and he kind of just bolstered up whatever I was saying at the time, and just made me feel valued, you know, your opinion does mean something, even if you don't really know why, what you're saying is actually really good, you know, and I don't know, I walked out of that class field 10 feet tall. You're like, hey, okay, maybe I'll be okay here, you know. And then the other thing I remember, and I didn't know this was part of it, but a couple years later I had a political revolution class, which I just loved that class, and we would go to the professor's house in the afternoons, I'd like every Wednesday at 3 o'clock. Whoever wanted to go, these would be 1520, of the students would be in there, would be sitting around, and he would talk about, you know, revolutions and different things, just back and forth, just kind of shooting the breeze. It's kind of an intellectual conversation, and I was a football player, you know, and, like, wow, this is, this is pretty okay, you know, this is kind of fun thing to do. And I just didn't know you could have that kind of a conversation, that's what part of college was all about, till I got to ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú.

President Greg Crawford
And political science, was there a reason you chose that for a major?

Coach John Harbaugh
Well, I chose political science right out of the gate.

President Greg Crawford
You did, so you never changed your mind?

Coach John Harbaugh
I never changed my mind.

President Greg Crawford
Well, that's awesome. Well, the pipeline to becoming an NFL head coach is pretty narrow. It gets pretty, not many people have that opportunity to do it. Tell us, as a head coach in the NFL, what are you really trying to build, are you trying to build a winning team, a culture? What's what are the foundational blocks that get you to that winning team?

Coach John Harbaugh
Well, it's all of those things. I mean, you are trying to, you're trying to build something that's bigger than self. You're bit, you're building something that hopefully everybody can believe in and buy into. You know, one of the things we're working right now with the Giants, I think they would tell you, is we're trying to find ourselves. You know, what are we going to be about as a group? What are we going to stand for, and that should be kind of a collection of all of us, all of who we are and what we stand for, and all these conversations that we're going to have. We talk all the time about, we talk about obnoxious communication, maybe glorious communication is a better way to say it, but we want to be talking about all these things that are related to football all the time. We want to confront everything that has to do with what we're trying to accomplish. We understand what we're trying to accomplish. Oh, what do.. what are we trying to accomplish? What are we here for? We're here for football. We're building a football team. We're building a football war machine, so to speak. We're building a football team that can take the field and can impose its will on its opponents, you know, that's what we're doing. This is football, it's not, you know, it's not rocket science, you know. We're not, we're not trying to change the world here, we're trying to build something that's really successful among a group of 100 people. So when we take the field on a Sunday afternoon against an opponent that's also the best in the world at what they do, we're operating together. We've got to be better than they do in all these situations, all these scenarios. So, we've got to be on the same page. We've got to be thinking alike. We've got to be of one mind, you know, one heartbeat, so to speak. But we've got to understand what comes next and how we're going to respond, because you know, when the chips start flying, you know, the tackles and the blocks, and then the throws start flying. You can't control all that, but you have to understand how the guy next year is going to respond, how he's going to react, because you've gone through it so many times, you practice it so many times that you're thinking exactly the same way. So, we're trying to build that, and there's components to that, are technical, there are components to that are spiritual, that are more purposeful, and we try to talk about those things all the time, so when it's all said and done, we can identify our purpose, we understand what our identity is as a team, and we can go out there and play well together.

President Greg Crawford
You've been at it for a long time, and you've been fortunate to have great runs, and you've been at the at that helm for a very long time. When you look back and reflect, how has your leadership changed or evolved over that window?

Coach John Harbaugh
That's a great question. You know, so much of it is about circumstances and just things that happen. You know, you just kind of meet things as they happen. You meet circumstances where they're at, and you meet people where they're at. I think, as you kind of go through it, life is life is best lived going forward. I mean, you've got to dive into the next day. You know, what's my favorite day? You know, Winnie the Pooh was asked, he said, "Today. You know, wow, my favorite day. Today, my favorite day." You got to dive into the day and make the best of the day, and you really can't think too much about what it means until later, when you get a chance to look back, and you begin to understand, oh, okay, I can see why that happened, or I can see why this result, you know, occurred because of these decisions or choices that were made. Some were good, and some weren't so good, you know. So, I think that's kind of all part of the process. So, what I've learned, basically, is to take those things really one day at a time, and to meet people where they are, don't be so caught up in yourself, don't be worried about what people are thinking about you. It doesn't really matter what they're thinking about you, they're not thinking about you, even as the leader, they're thinking about themselves, they're thinking about their goals, their aspirations, their dreams, what they want to accomplish. That's what your players are considering. How can this coach help me get to where I want to go? Because I've been thinking about this my whole life. I started playing football when I was five years old in Little League football. I wanted to make it to the NFL, and now here's my chance. Here's my chance. That's what he's thinking about. It's not about you, it's about him, and it's also about the mission. It's about what you're trying to accomplish. So, first and foremost, I think the thing I've learned is that you put that first, you put the mission first. The mission is to become the best football team that we can be, and to prove it every single day, that's our mission. And who's involved in that? We would say the men. Now we have men and women, so it's the people, it's the people, it's mission, and people right next to each other, real close. It's just that the mission is a little bit bigger than the people. The team is a little bit more important than the people on the team. The people on the team have to take what's important to them, which is self, and make it a little bit smaller than us, the team. Okay, it's mission, it's men, just slightly smaller than way down at the bottom, like in really small, little, tiny print, you can barely see it, is me, okay? In me, and then when you're the leader, that's how you got to think, man, you got to think about everybody, everything, and what you're trying to accomplish all the time before yourself. And if you do that, if you think that way, and you honestly approach every conversation that way, in terms of like, what can I do to help this person accomplish what they want to accomplish, what can I say to make them feel like they can do it, like they're worthy, like they're valuable, like they matter. What can I say to them right now to make them feel that way about themselves? Because if I do that, then there's a real good chance they're going to be the best version of themselves, because they know that, as their coach, I'm with them, I'm in their corner. I want them to do well, and I'm there for them. And if you do that, I think you have a chance, at least, maybe you know, to build something that's meaningful.

President Greg Crawford
Uh, you were at the Ravens for a very long time. Now, I know you're going to another NFL football team, but it's a brand new culture. So, as a leader going into a new place, and you know many listeners are going to have going to be changing jobs in the future. How do you get ready for that new culture? What do you do? Is it more listening, or you know, how are you going to get ready for that first game?

Coach John Harbaugh
Well, you know what, that's a great question. And there is no one simple answer, I think, other than you just walk into that future. You walk into that future like you walk into those circumstances, you walk into those relationships, and you try to figure it out, and just figure out what you're dealing with. You know what has to be done. You know what? Do we need? You just meet all those challenges where you find them. You can't overthink it too much. It's not the same. You don't look back and say, hey, this is how we did it, where it was before. It's like there's principles, there are things that you stand on, that you believe in, that you're going to carry forward that are going to be true, because they're self-evident truths of the created universe that are never going to change. Like, for instance, if you want to play good defense, you've got to stop the run. I think God created that into the universe of football, you know it's a truth, it's going to be true no matter what team you coach. But there's other things that aren't going to be the same, those methods, you know, those are different than principles. Those methods are like water, man. They move, they flow, they change, they overwhelm, they drown, they drip. You know, water, strategies, methods, ideas, that's always something that you got to be creating anew. You know, and so when you go into a new situation, there's a lot of new things to create.

President Greg Crawford
As a head coach in the NFL. What is most misunderstood that you hear from people out there? You got a few examples.

Coach John Harbaugh
It's a great.. I don't know if I have examples, but I mean it's crazy how many times how many people have come up and told me they want to get a picture, and after I take the picture, they tell me they're a Steelers fan. I can tell you that happens all the time. Oh, but. I have a Steelers fan. How to take the picture with you? Anyway, it's okay, you're a football fan, that's cool. But one of the things I think that people are surprised with, like people think I think coaching the players is harder than it is, like they kind of think, man, these guys, they got the big egos, making all this money and all that kind of stuff. You know, what's it like coaching these guys? I always say it's great coaching these guys. These guys are great. These guys have really worked hard to get to where they're at. They have sacrificed a lot. They are family men, they are hard workers, they are disciplined people. They get up early in the morning and they come to work, they go home late at night, they compete, they're fighting for their lives every single day because they want to accomplish something special, and they want to take care of their family, so it's like I just say, you, I guess the biggest surprise would be is I try to tell them it's like we got the players in this league are really good people, not perfect. People make mistakes, certainly, but I'm just telling you, you would be honored to know these guys, and I try to make sure people understand that.

President Greg Crawford
So you're often described as a culture setting coach. Tell us what that actually means, culture setting in the NFL.

Coach John Harbaugh
Such a great question, but it's like the things that we've been talking about, like what is a culture? Okay, a culture is a shared understanding, it's a worldview. Okay, we have a culture in our country, or we have a culture on our campus, or we have a culture in our family, right? What do we stand for? You know, you grow up and your dad might tell you, you know, when you go out there, remember, you know that name you're carrying, that name out there, you know, don't do anything to sully the family name, right? You want to build something that people are proud of, and that they know they're part of something that's bigger than themselves. So, with that, it's like, okay, well, what is our culture? What do we stand for? What is important? What are we going to hold true? What are the principles that we are going to abide by? And then you've got to, like, I think, as a leader, it's really important to do two things: involve and incorporate everybody into building the culture, because the culture is going to be an amalgamation of all of us and the way we think and what we believe, and if you don't have, if you don't have the right kind of people, it's going to be hard to have the right kind of culture. So you want to make sure you try as much you can to have the right kind of people. Then convince people that you know this is the way we should be thinking. Oh, and then what do you think? You know, what do you think? What do you think? Hear what they think, and incorporate that into the way you're thinking. So really, at the end of the day, I think a culture is something that everybody owns. It's something that everybody believes in. It's something that we can all abide to, because this is what we stand for. Okay, you know, we are, we're the RedHawks, we are the RedHawks, we are the ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú RedHawks, or we are ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University. That should mean something. It should be an identity, you know? Maybe we're the Giants, that's our identity, or we're the Ravens. How do the Ravens play? Well, people that watch would say this is how they play. Well, that's your identity, that's an outgrowth of your culture, of what you believe in. You know, if you can instill that and get buy into that, and have people relate to that. In other words, this is who we are, and this is who I am. I am a part of that, and therefore I'm valuable, and this is valuable.

President Greg Crawford
I want to ask you about the organization of your team. For me, I have vice presidents and deans that report up to me, but what's the organizational structure? You're the CEO of an NFL football team, who reports to you? How do you keep accountability? How do you keep this big engine going every day?

Coach John Harbaugh
Yeah, well, that's a great question. I mean, everybody's in it together. It's a flat operation with a hierarchy, you know, and decisions have to be made, and people are responsible for making decisions in their area. So, everybody's a leader in their area, but ultimately, if you're running it, you're responsible for every decision, and you're responsible for everybody. So, you want to be involved with every decision, and you want to be involved with everybody as much as you possibly can, but you also want to give everybody, especially the experts in their area, the opportunity to be the experts and give them the responsibility for the outcomes of what you're trying to accomplish. So, with us, we have the head coach and you have coordinators, you have offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator, they oversee the special teams coordinator, the an assistant head coach, now it's our special teams coordinator, so he's also involved in a lot of the different things in terms of operating the program, the football side of the program, and then with that you have position coaches, so you have a quarterback coach, a running back coach, an offensive line coach, a tight end coach, a wide receivers coach on offense, and they are the head coaches of their rooms, they're responsible for the culture in their rooms, the attitude, the effort that their guys play with, and they're supposed to, they're responsible to teach their guys how to do things the right way. The coordinator has to tie it all together, but we all have to work together to do that. So, you've got leadership on every single level, even in the room with the players. The players, I mean, you can have Ray Lewis, you know, as your linebacker.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my goodness.

Coach John Harbaugh
He's in your room, but he's Ray Lewis. He's the greatest linebacker to ever play the game. Is he important? Is he kind of important? Does what he thinks matter? It sure does. You know, and he's a leader. He's a leader like none of the head coach could never be a leader like Ray Lewis is a leader. Ray Lewis is a leader like Ray Lewis, like a great player is a leader. So that's what I'm saying. It's flat, you know, with responsibility and account. Ability, so all that, then in football, you've got all the other things too. It's the team, it's that it's built around the team. It should be about the football, but so many things go with it, so many logistical things. I mean, we've got equipment, you've got travel, you've got food, you've got, you've got the stadium, you got people selling tickets. I mean, you know, as a coach, I'm not involved in too much of all that, but that's all part of it, so you're part of a team there too, you know. I'm part of a team, the general manager and the ownership group, and the people that do the marketing, I mean, all of us, you've got to work together.

President Greg Crawford
I didn't really appreciate how horizontal it was, and it just, it's interesting. So, you're down there at the Cradle of Coaches, standing proud, and you got all kinds of other coaches down there. You've got Earl "Red" Blaik, who would be the oldest right now, who was born in 1898 and he went off to West Point, and had this amazing career, and I think he had over 40 people that he placed into other coaching jobs. So, you're the head coach, and how important is it for you to mentor those folks that are reporting up to you, and maybe get them head coaching jobs, or get them the chance to be the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator. So, tell us about that in the NFL, and how you approach that to give other younger people opportunity.

Coach John Harbaugh
Well, it's incredibly important. I think it should be a natural outgrowth of what you're doing every single day. You would like to think that when you do your job, the people that are working with you and around you are watching you and are taking things from you. I mean, I've seen guys go off to other jobs, and I've seen, you know, the things that they put up with, the things they say, and I'm like, I know where you got that, and I'm proud of that, you know, and they'll call back and say, you know, this is a, you know, I remember you told me this, Coach, and I remember this is what we did, Mike Macdonald, he came to us in 2014 right out of college with an entry level position, and now he's a Super Bowl champ, head coach, the Seattle Seahawks.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, absolutely right.

Coach John Harbaugh
Jesse Minter came in the same, maybe a year after that. Jesse Minter came in, worked his way up to become the secondary coach for us, and now he's the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, which is my old job, you know. And I'm proud of him for that. I'm happy for him, you know, to see those guys do that. Todd Monken, who was a longtime coach, he's about my age. We're contemporaries, yet he came to us the last three years as the offensive coordinator, and now he was just hired as a head coach at the Cleveland Browns. So, these are all things that just they're meaningful, and you do take a little bit of pride in them, but now we got to play against them. Yeah, we got to find a way to beat them. Let's not forget that too, you know. So, we'll be competing against each other as well, but like, for Earl "Red" Blaik to put, you know, 40 head coaches out there.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my god.

Coach John Harbaugh
It's an incredible thing. Earl "Red" Blaik, the army teams of the 30s and the 40s are the greatest football teams, maybe ever.

President Greg Crawford
Ever. I know.

Coach John Harbaugh
And, he's right here from ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú. He's the first, he's the first guy in the row on the Cradle of Coaches.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, well, that's great. Tell us a little bit. I mean, I'm interested in the failure, when somebody fails, how do you pick them up or help them grow, and how do you take that forward? The successes are a little easier, right? You can celebrate them and all that, but what about the failure piece? Tell us about how you handle that.

Coach John Harbaugh
Yeah, I think I think everything is a challenge, you know. Everything is an opportunity, and everything is a challenge. I mean, triumphs and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same. I think Rudyard Kipling said that, you know, that's a challenge. So, even in the triumphs, you know, there's challenges and there are pitfalls and there are traps, you know, that go with that. But, failures are different, because failures kind of just, they eat away at your soul just a little bit. They make you question who you really are, what kind of worth you really have. And not just that, in the social media era nowadays, you come under attack, you come under attack in kind of a vicious way, a lot of times, and you've kind of, you got to understand that.

President Greg Crawford
I know the feeling.

Coach John Harbaugh
Oh my god. Well, you know, you got you got one of these, you got one of these. It's a dangerous thing, right here, right? And you can get sucked into this thing, this little thing right there. You can, you can get pulled into this thing, and you can think that that's the whole world, that is not the world right there. Okay, the world is out there, so you can't believe what's said, but you know failure is a opportunity to grow, and Abraham Lincoln is a great story.

President Greg Crawford
Oh yeah.

Coach John Harbaugh
Michael Jordan is another great story. Those are amazing stories that will just.. if you can't.. if you don't understand that, just read those two stories about what the opportunity of failure is. I mean, that's how you become what you're going to become, that's how you become better. You become tougher, you know, you become hardened a little bit, but you also become smarter, you become wiser, and you understand that the one thing, if you just step back and look at, like, our existence on this earth, our mortal existence on this earth, the one thing, the main thing, and almost the only thing that we are not given to control is outcomes, but the one thing we are judged on incessantly is outcomes. Yeah, okay. So the one thing you can't control is the one thing that you're going to have to be judged on. So, but what are you given to control? You're given to control pretty much almost everything else. You can control every process, you can control your attitude, you can control your effort, you control the way you treat people, you can control how much you learn, how smart you are, how hard you work, you can control all those things, and when you endeavor to control all those things you actually can't control, which are way more than the things you can't control, then along the way the outcomes start going your way eventually if you. And understand that that's what's at stake, most people, because they don't do well, they fail, they come up short, they stop, they're not willing to fight through, they're not willing to keep going, they're not willing to understand, it's not, it's not, it's not the outcome I'm giving the control, it's the process, it's along the way, and if I do all those things along the way, all of a sudden outcomes start going your way.

President Greg Crawford
Oh my gosh, a great answer. I love it.

Coach John Harbaugh
Thanks, I appreciate that.

President Greg Crawford
I'm going to tell you, I am learning so much today. This is fantastic.

President Greg Crawford
So when you think about ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú, and there's you think about the students that are starting at the university, you know, we want to make sure we graduate both students that are going to be great in the workforce or find a great job or become a doctor, whatever it may be, but also be thoughtful leaders in the end, and you know we make all kinds of great leaders, whether it's coaches to Fortune 500 CEOs here at the university, but what do you think is the responsibility of universities to take in 18 year olds these days and graduate them and prepare them for a pretty technology-centric world that we're moving into?

Coach John Harbaugh
That's a great question, you know, and I'm sure that you could answer that way better than I could.

President Greg Crawford
I'm trying to get advice here.

Coach John Harbaugh
You know, I mean, that's a, that's a big question, but I do think that education is a multi-layered thing. I mean, why is intercollegiate athletics in America a part of higher education? You know, why is it? It's very unique, yet it's been so successful. No other country would even consider that. They think it's crazy that we do it, yet we do it. We do it the highest, we do at the highest level. Why? I would say because intercollegiate athletics are like everything else here, they're part of the educational process. There are amazing lessons, amazing journeys that people take through the challenges and through the opportunities of sports, just like there are through all the other things that are available on campus. So the ability to take all those things as a president of a university and say, you know, we're layering all these things together, we're tying these things together, and we're trying to create an opportunity for students to come here, diverse backgrounds, every different kind of background that you can imagine, every different kind of thought process that you can imagine, every belief system that you can imagine, and meet them where they're at and help them to develop into the type of person that can live a good life, that can make a difference in people's lives, can become not just like a Fortune 500 CEO, that's really that's okay, that's great, but that's not the goal. How about help you become a better father, a better husband, a better wife, a better member of the community, you know, a thoughtful, a thinker, a better citizen, you know, what does that take to think about other people, to be empathetic? How do you find a way to build that into everything you're doing? I would think that you want to have the right kind of professors, the right kind of coaches, you want to have the right kind of classes, you want to make sure that it's not just all about whether you get an A, B, C, you know, a D, okay? Hopefully not too many of those, but hopefully it's about, you know, the way we treat one another in this environment, the way that political science professor treated me that day in that political science class made me feel valued. That's the kind of thing I would hope that higher education keeps in mind. And I know, I know you do here at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University.

President Greg Crawford
We're so excited for this class coming up. We know they're all going to be leaders once they get out there, because a lot of the ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉúans graduate, and then sooner than they think, they become leading and more responsibility in their jobs and their vocations, and so forth. So, take us through the last job you had before you were head coach, and then how big of a jump was it to go from that, where you had a boss reporting up to, and then take it to how big of a jump was it to that head coaching role. So, how do we get our students ready? Because it's going to come, and when it comes, how do you get ready for that?

Coach John Harbaugh
That's a great question. You know, and I don't think there is an easy answer to that, but every job along the way, the next job was a bigger job, and you always were hoping and dreaming about the next opportunity. I would just encourage you, know anybody, okay, to basically focus on the job at hand. I mean, do your best to do the best job you can with the job that you've been entrusted with, and when you do that, you'll learn so many lessons that are just going to come naturally when you take the next step. You don't want to be the person that gets to the next level, and then all of a sudden you don't have what it takes, and that's because you haven't necessarily maybe completely mastered the job that you're at right now, you know. And then also be open-minded when you get that opportunity. When I went to the Ravens, I was unheard of. I mean, nobody knew my name, they didn't, where they, where'd they find this guy? It's a special teams coach, all right, with the Eagles, you know, and I kind of remind him, yeah, you know, we've been playing you guys in special teams, and we've been pretty much kicking your butt on a regular basis, remember, you know, might laugh about it, but you have to prove yourself, and really, it doesn't really matter, I don't care what the last job was, where you came from, in a lot of ways, what school you went. To you know who your what your family name is, how much money your parents made, all that kind of stuff. When you, when you get into a leadership job, none of that is going to matter. What's going to matter is how you treat the people that you're with, the people, and you gotta, you gotta manage in every direction. You gotta manage up, you gotta do everything you can to make your boss look good, to make your boss successful, that's your job. Okay, you gotta do everything you can to work with the people on, you know, the other departments that you're, that are your peers and your colleagues and your coworkers, everything you can to be a good teammate, everything you can when you're talking about down, if you want to look at it that way. But really, I should be thinking about, I'm underneath the people who are reporting to me, and I'm trying to lift them up and help them do a better job, because if I can help this, if I, if I'm, I'm a, maybe I, maybe I get the promotion because I'm a good salesman. What made me a good salesman? I don't know, but if I can, I got the job because I was a good salesman. Now I have to figure out how to make these other 10 people who report to me now great salesmen. That's my new job. My job is to sell, probably still too, but my job is to help them sell. I need to help them sell, so I'm not just doing, I'm not just out selling, I'm selling, but I'm also helping them become better salesmen. That means you got to care about them, you got to have empathy toward them, you got to be thinking about them, you'll be driving home at night thinking about how am I going to make John or Jane a better salesman, what could they learn. Okay, what can I, how can I teach them? I got to put them first, and I would say that'd be the best advice I can give you. I don't know exactly how you make the jump, other than care about the people we're working with and working for you.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, that's great. So, you're down there with your statue, your own statue, of course, and there's a lot of other giants down there. Now you're a giant and a Giant, I guess. So, what does that Cradle of Coaches tradition mean to you, and being a part of that group of just amazing, accomplished, successful coaches?

Coach John Harbaugh
It's something I cherish. I can tell you, it doesn't seem real to me. It doesn't seem real to me. I mean, I grew up knowing who all these guys are, because we grew up in a football house. Yeah, you know, I was told the story. I knew who Earl "Red" Blaik was. Yeah, I knew who Paul Dietzel was, I knew John Pont was, you know, these guys, of course, Bo Schembechler was my dad's boss.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah.

Coach John Harbaugh
You know, so that doesn't even make sense to me, that my statue is down there with those statues, that doesn't, that doesn't compute, I don't really understand that, but I'm grateful for it, you know, and honestly, just from a perspective of faith, I just, I just look at it, I just say, you know, you know, God, works in amazing ways, and He does amazing things. One thing I'll tell the.. I'll tell the graduates, you know, things aren't always going to go the way you expect them to go in life. You know, as a matter of fact, sometimes they're going to go way better. They're going to go way better. Things are going to happen to you, they're so good you can't even believe they're happening to you. You know, you're.. it's like your head is being anointed with oil, you know. It's like this is incredible. It's gonna go the other way sometimes too. But don't discount the fact that you list of great possibilities out there. Things can happen that you didn't dream of. I promise you, that statue being out there, I never dreamed of when I saw all those. When I knew the Cradle to Coaches when I was playing here, and when they asked me about it 12 years ago, that they said they wanted to do it. David Sayler and Steve Dailey. I was basically like, oh, absolutely not. No, no, there's no way I belong with those guys.

President Greg Crawford
It's amazing when you walk through the Cradle of Coaches down there. And one, I was lucky enough to do a podcast with Mike Brown, the son of Paul Brown, the great Paul Brown, who's a quarterback here.

Coach John Harbaugh
And the great Mike Brown, owner of the Bengals.

President Greg Crawford
Exactly, yeah, exactly. Running the Bengals. And Paul was an innovator in football and doing all kinds of innovation and technology things long before others picked up on it, or even long before it was even legal to do in the NFL, some of these innovations that he had. When your career in the NFL, what kind of technology innovations have you seen that you can share with us that have either changed the game or changed your coaching style and your leadership style?

Coach John Harbaugh
Well, I mean, it's all different now. It's just as different as different as society is different, different as football is different. I mean, we process so much information now, we have staffs that process information. I can't even tell you, like, how different is, yet it's still the same. You're still breaking down a football game, we call breaking down the game. You break it down by situation, you break it down by play call, you break it down by player, and what they do. And we just do it way faster, and we do way more games now. And they dive into it in all these different ways, and all these analytics, they get in the phone, he said, I should have gone for it on fourth and one, 51%. I'm like, what about the other 49% you don't get it, you know. You gotta decide he's still football, you know. That thing really hasn't changed, but I think the basic fundamental crux of the game, the principle of the game is the same. Everything else, just like the rest of the world, just kind of keeps moving on.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting all the stuff that goes on in terms of what we get as fans and what we can see, and so forth, and we can judge you as the coach when we're sitting in our chairs at home.

Coach John Harbaugh
Justifiably so. That's the way it should be.

President Greg Crawford
So, stepping back from football, and let's talk about competition. Even young kids, when they're playing soccer or baseball, whatever it may be, through college athletics to the pros. What is exactly the real purpose of competition, especially for those younger kids who are playing ball and they still go to school and everything else, but what does that do for them as they grow up?

Coach John Harbaugh
I love that you asked that question, because it's such a great question, and something with the Hardball Coaching Academy that we talk about all the time, because we talk about youth sports all the time, and really like, what is the point. When I was growing up, we had little league, okay? You had little league, maybe in the fall, you did, we had little league football, then when you basketball, wrestling, then you went to track, or you went to baseball, or softball, you know, in the summertime, then you're back, and you, we had hockey, you know, we played all the sports, now it's like, if you're seven years old, you're not like dedicated to baseball and your in California, you're never going to make it to the big leagues, you know. It's like, really, is that the goal to try to make it to the big leagues? You know, are we trying to have an experience? You know, we're trying to expose our kids to something. My daughter played lacrosse, she played all the sports, she was a, she was like an all-league basketball player. They won the state championship, she was the point guard. She went to Notre Dame played lacrosse, then she went to South Florida and played. Now she's in law school, and so I had a chance to watch her come through the ranks as in youth sports, and I saw coaches I loved and I thought were amazing, and I saw coaches who I hated and I thought were terrible. Yeah, you know, and just like.. and that's just the reality of it, you know. And so I think anything that we can do to kind of help coaches and youth sports just be better and be the best they can be is really important, because we're entrusting our kids, we're entrusting our kids two, three hours a day to this exercise. Okay, and they're gonna go out there and the experience that they have will stay with them for the rest of their life. When a coach says something to a young person, they will remember that for the rest of their life. A lot of times, whether it's good or bad, I really don't want that coach saying something to my daughter that she's going to remember in a negative way for the rest of her life. I don't need that from him. No, okay, I don't need that from him. I need him or her to help her feel better. I want her to want to go back to practice the next day. I want her to look forward to the experience of playing sports, and then once when she looks forward to the experience of it, and she, and she feels valued, and she feels worthwhile, a part of the team. Then we can start talking about the competition that you're talking about. Now we can start talking about, oh, what does it mean to work hard, to be the best you can be, to compete in a big game, oh, to try your hardest, and to come up just a little bit short. Okay, is that bad? Is that good? What does that mean? That's okay. Did you do your best? Did you do your very best? Now, did you honestly, did you work as hard as you could? Did you run? You hit a ground ball. Did you run the first base as fast as you could? You got thrown out, but did you run the first base as fast as you could? You did. We're good.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah.

Coach John Harbaugh
We're good, you know, and I think that's something that youth sports can teach kids growing up, but we have to do a better job of training our coaches, all right, because their goal should be that young person wants to come back next week and next year and be a part of this again next year, and if you, if you accomplish that, then I think you're onto something.

President Greg Crawford
Oh, I love it. Well, Coach, it's been an honor and a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. We're just so grateful, and thank you for the great conversation today. I learned so much, and I can't wait to share this podcast with the 250,000 living alums out there now from ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University. I'm sure they're going to love it. So, have a wonderful season, and best of luck to you with the Giants.

Coach John Harbaugh
Thank you very much, President Crawford. Appreciate you.

President Greg Crawford
Love and honor,

Coach John Harbaugh
Love and Honor, Love and Honor.

President Greg Crawford
Thanks for listening to this episode of In Such a Place from ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú University. Stay tuned for more great episodes with more great guests wherever podcasts are found.