Jim Harbaugh - The Mechanist Takes Over

GBMWolverine Michigan Football TidbitsPosted at 7:00am — 2/27/2015

Michigan Wolverine Football: Jim Harbaugh — The Mechanist Takes Over — Part III

Series Finale Part III of IV

This first year of their tenure will be an interesting challenge for Coach Jim Harbaugh and staff. Coach Brady Hoke highlighted teaching, Coach Harbaugh and his staff will also teach and use repetition, but in the true sense of mechanism, the part must work, and in football that becomes interpreted as inserting competition and a demand for technical production (technique) to develop parts that can contribute toward the overall success of the machine.

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The best parts get to be included within the machine. The best of the best play the most downs. The best parts, those that see the field, simplistically must not only be better than other team parts, but also better than opposing parts. The underlying metaphor of the mechanist is the machine, and the belief that a machine can be broken by a non-functioning part leads to parts being replaced before seeking a new machine. In college, with a limited number of years for player eligibility, parts must annually be retooled and changed by necessity.

Jim Harbaugh is now in the process of developing and assessing the parts that will make up the new Michigan football machine. To start with, this staff will discover and plan to overcome clear mechanical difficulties: a new system and unproven skill players; there will be a need for patience, from within and from outside, the inside is the team and staff, this need surpasses the outside faction, consisting of program followers. The mechanist seeks to quickly eliminate impediments that slow the final product development, as impediments hinder the production of the parts.

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Players will have initial fears and uncertainties; enter the mechanist who will clearly communicate that any self-doubts or hesitation to improve may place one into an unflattering part category: such as, used parts, broken parts, shelved parts, missing parts, or rejected parts!

The vehicle for successful part production is no great secret: each part has a role and must develop/mold to become machine worthy, perhaps by becoming more adaptable and pliable for machining than other similar parts. The part is to be tooled and refined to function within a machine; the machine is not to be modified to benefit any singular part (the contextualist view). The part is to benefit the machine, the machine is not secondary to any part, but success is determined by the collective contributions of all parts: the team, the team, the team.

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Contextualism is clearly not the preferred worldview of Coach Jim Harbaugh, but in the first or second year of his new tenure, Coach may have to flex some to the side of pragmatism and throw in some adaptations/modifications out of pure need. Jim Harbaugh will return to pure machine building as allowed by resources, or when his patience with adaptations diminishes.

Coach Jim Harbaugh has been in this situation before, at San Diego, Stanford, and to some degree at San Francisco. He is a successful rebuilder and the blueprint is clearly mechanistic in nature. Coach has been fortunate enough to find coaches that fit his methodology and are proven developers of talent, both high and average level types. Harbaugh has demonstrated some patience to ascend the machine upwards in stature.

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Written by GBMWolverine Staff — Doc4Blu

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