by Fleck’s many handy philosophies. 
“Row the Boat” is meant to remind 
everyone to do their part and stay in 
unison with the team. “Change your 
best” is a reminder to constantly 
improve, and “Elite” has turned into 
a constant description of all things 
relating to the team.

Fleck’s mantras are now part 

of Hart’s routine vernacular. He 
uses the word “elite” five times in 
a 13-minute interview, the ideal 
descriptor of Fleck’s system.

On one play during warmups, 

freshman running back LeVante 
Bellamy runs the wrong route. Hart, 
walking over to him, rhetorically 
shouts, 
“What’s 
the 
play?” 
As 

Bellamy looks on at him, Hart does a 
paddling motion, shorthand for “Row 
the Boat.”

He does these things not because 

“Bronconese” is the only language 
he speaks anymore, but because in 
order to add them to his coaching 
repertoire, he has to master them 
first.

These philosophies are what 

Hart will eventually take from his 
time in Kalamazoo, his foray into 
unchartered coaching waters.

“He’s really an elite example of 

what it means to be a Bronco,” Fleck 
says after practice. “But it stems 
from his time at Michigan as well.”

Fleck knows a lot about building 

a program. Someday, Hart wants to 
emulate his methods, if he ever gets 
the chance to be a head coach. He’d 
like that, but not anytime soon. He’s 
still learning, after all, and the more 
logical next step for him would be to 
become an offensive coordinator.

“When he got here, my job is to 

take him to the next step,” Fleck 
said. “Develop him to (what) he 
wants to become, and then wherever 
he goes from here, or whatever he 
does after me, he’s gonna take a 
piece of me too and carry that on. 
You’re just gaining experience. He 
doesn’t know everything yet, but you 
never will.”

That kind of experience is what 

drew Hart to the Broncos in the 
first place. Fleck has an infectious 
personality, and learning how to 
generate enthusiasm will be one of 
the most important things Hart can 
learn from Fleck. 

In fact, many of the things he has 

picked up aren’t so unlike what he’s 
taken from his Michigan mentors.

The lesson he says he’ll take 

from Fleck is to “change your best.” 
He likes its simple meaning that 
yesterday’s effort isn’t good enough 
today. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, 
that the phrase he most remembers 
from Carr is similar: “You either get 
better or worse every day.”

“I’ll make my own in 10 years,” 

Hart said. “But there’s something 

I’ve learned from every (coach), 
something I’ve loved from every one 
of them.”

In that way, Hart’s experience 

isn’t entirely unique. On some level, 
he’s still aspiring to be the same kind 
of coach, with the same core values 
he learned at Michigan. He’s just 
learning to do it in different ways.

“I’m blessed to be here,” Hart 

said. “I’m a 10-times better coach 
than I was. I didn’t realize it at that 
time — I knew this would be a great 
place to come because I knew they 
were going to have success, but I 
didn’t know how much of a better 
coach they were going to make me.”

But behind Hart as he says all 

this is that countdown clock on the 
scoreboard — a stark reminder that 
Hart’s next step is not another job 
switch, but another season.

***

Sept. 4 came and went, and the 

Spartans showed up to play. Western 
Michigan held things closer than 
expected, but there was no upset in 
store. Michigan State 37, Western 
Michigan 24.

The Spartans held Franklin to 

23 yards, and Georgia Southern 
limited him to 58 in the next game. 
Adjustments were in store for the 
Broncos.

Fortunately for them, Hart is a 

film rat. Always has been, probably 
always will be.

When Hart made the varsity team 

as a freshman at Onondaga Central 
High School in Syracuse, New York, 
coach Bill Spicer didn’t quite know 
what he was getting. He knew Hart’s 
talent, but he was still surprised at his 
knowledge and at his work ethic.

“Every lunch period, he would 

come down, and him and I would 
watch film,” Spicer said. “That was 
from freshman year on. … He would 
be in my office during lunch period 
every single day. During the season 
and offseason, he would probably be 
in there three or four times a week.

“There were times when I would 

be breaking the film, like a Saturday 
afternoon or something, and the guys 
would come down to lift and then 
they left. And he would stick around, 
and we would break down film. And 
there were times when I would go 
onto another play and he would be 
like, ‘Wait a minute coach, go back to 
that one, I want to check something 
out.’ ”

Hart has known he wanted to be 

a coach since at least high school, 
maybe even a little before it.

And as Spicer recalls, it was 

unusual having a player who was that 
plugged in at such a young age.

“As a coach, you’ve gotta let your 

barriers down a little bit when you’ve 
got a kid like that,” Spicer said. “He’d 
come off on the sideline and say, ‘Hey 

coach, if we run this play I think it’s 
gonna be wide open.’ … You’ve gotta 
swallow your pride a little bit. You 
run the play and the kid’s running for 
a touchdown because two reasons: 
No. 1, he would see it. No. 2, because 
he said it to me, he’s gonna make sure 
it works.”

Those are habits Hart carries to 

this day — habits he learned in high 
school, then honed at Michigan. 
More importantly, these are habits 
that will make or break his ability to 
continue to climb coaching ladders.

When Hart arrived at Michigan, 

David Underwood — then a senior — 
remembers being surprised at how 
well Hart could understand what was 
happening on film.

“A lot of freshmen come in, (and) 

they’re watching film, but they 
don’t know what they’re looking at,” 
Underwood said. “It’s like glancing 
at a TV. Yeah, you’re watching TV, 
but are you actually soaking that 
information up? Do you know what 
you’re looking at? He was able to 
understand and really watch.”

Now, he’s trying to transfer those 

abilities to his own group of young 
backs. Franklin said that when the 
Bronco running backs go in for a film 
session, they often find Hart already 
in the room with film rolling.

“He teaches us a lot of life lessons,” 

Franklin said. “There’s a quote he 
always says: ‘To be forewarned is to 
be forearmed.’ I’m always trying to 
watch film and forewarn myself.”

Perhaps 
that 
helps 
explain 

why 
after 
two 
below-average 

performances, Franklin rebounded 
for 161 yards against Murray State, in 
the Broncos’ first win of the year last 
Saturday.

It’s hard not to wonder what the 

Broncos have in store for their next 
matchup, another team with which 
Hart has a past: Ohio State. He 
doesn’t talk much about Michigan’s 
rivalries now that he’s at Western 
Michigan, but the fact remains that 
he never beat the Buckeyes. He was 
part of the first class to go four years 
without beating Ohio State since 
1960-1963.

The Buckeyes may not be a rivalry 

game for Hart’s Broncos, but they do 
present an opportunity to accomplish 
one of the few things he never did at 
Michigan.

***

Hart laughs when asked whether 

going to Western Michigan was a 
lateral move, giving a diplomatic 
answer about how blessed he is to be 
there, and how it was good to get out 
of his comfort zone.

Hart made lateral moves as a 

player all the time. Many of them 
eventually turned into touchdowns.

His former coach, Spicer, knows 

well that Hart didn’t make the move 

without good reason.

“I think you have many, many 

moves in coaching,” Spicer said. “You 
make so many moves that it looks like 
it might be lateral to the naked eye, 
but it’s really not. There’s always a 
rhyme or a reason.”

For Hart, some of those reasons 

are clear now — learning from Fleck, 
leaving the nest of the Michigan 
network — but others may not show 
up for years.

To understand Hart and where he 

is on his path, all you have to do is go 
back to that practice in August, when 
the offense pulled off a final-round 
victory over the defense in the box 
drill.

As the players ran down the field 

celebrating, Hart was among them, 
toward the back, pumping his fist in 

victory. Fleck stayed behind. 

Hart is still somewhere between 

his two careers — the star player and 
the polished coach. He will learn a 
little from every stop, and eventually, 
he’ll have a unique coaching style all 
his own. At that point, he’ll be the 
one halting practice, offering all-
or-nothing deals to his offense and 
defense.

But for now, just four years 

removed from playing, he still has 
a lot to learn about coaching, and 
plenty still to accomplish.

This Saturday, he’ll travel to 

Columbus, where he’ll be in a familiar 
place in different colors. The odds 
will be long, far longer than they ever 
were when Hart was at Michigan. 

It’s different at Western Michigan. 

That’s why he went there.

5
TheMichiganDaily — www.michigandaily.com
FootballSaturday — September 26, 2015
4

Michigan’s all-time 

leading rusher is 

honing his coaching 
skills in Kalamazoo

By MAX BULTMAN

Daily Sports Editor

KALAMAZOO, 
Mich. 
— 

Michigan’s last great running back 
wears a brown shirt now. It’s August, 
and Mike Hart, now 29 years old, is 
standing under a pocket in the clouds 
wearing sunglasses and a visor, 
waiting for Western Michigan’s 
football practice to start.

The scoreboards in both end zones 

are counting down the 17 days until 
Michigan State comes to Kalamazoo. 
The Broncos will need every minute 
of preparation to have a chance.

When he was at Michigan, the 

Spartans were a calendar opponent 
for Hart because they meant rivalry. 
But he’s a Bronco, for now, and 
Michigan State is only meaningful 
because his new team is looking for 
the upset.

Practice starts, and after about 20 

minutes, Broncos coach P.J. Fleck, 

the youngest head coach in the nation 
at 34 years old, blows his whistle.

“BOX!” he shouts, and the players 

and coaches stop what they’re doing 
and sprint to the center. The players 
form a circle — maybe it’s supposed 
to be a box — around two players. 
One is in brown and one in gold, and 
they lock up with pride on the line. 
It’s offense versus defense. One-on-
one. First knee to touch the turf loses. 

Sports Illustrated called Fleck’s 

tenure at Western Michigan “college 
football’s most fascinating sociology 
experiment,” and it’s easy to see 
why. The players in the middle of 
the circle go through four rounds of 
these battles, finally ending when 
Fleck — the third-year coach known 
for his enthusiasm and unorthodox 
methods — challenges the defense to 
defend its title in an all-or-nothing 
final match. The defense loses, 
and Hart and the offensive players 
celebrate by running down the field, 
jumping up and down.

This process takes about 15 

minutes of the two-hour practice. 
They’re taking a substantial amount 
of time for an activity that, frankly, 
seems kind of silly.

Two hours to the east, in Ann 

Arbor, the Michigan football team is 
in its figurative submarine, shielded 
from all publicity. There, the outside 
world is told, they run as a reward 
after a four-hour practice. It’s hard 
to say how similar it is because few 
are allowed to see inside.

But in Kalamazoo, this part of 

practice is open to the media. The 
local CBS affiliate has a camera 
rolling. Things seem different here.

For Hart, that’s not necessarily so 

bad.

***

For much of his football career, 

Hart has done things the Michigan 
way. He played for Lloyd Carr at 
Michigan from 2004 to 2008, and 
after a three-year stint in the NFL, 
he coached under former Wolverines 
defensive coordinator Ron English at 
Eastern Michigan.

He’s proud of that. He says he 

loves Carr “to death” and speaks 
fondly of English, who gave him his 
first coaching job. But at a certain 
point, he had to learn to do things 
differently.

So after three years coaching 

at Eastern Michigan — the first in 
charge of offensive quality control, 
the next two as running backs 
coach — Hart accepted the same 
job working for Fleck at Western 
Michigan before the 2014 season.

At the time, some wondered 

whether it was a lateral move. But 
for Hart, who coached the Eagles’ 
Bronson Hill to a 1,100-yard season 
in 2013, Western Michigan offered 
something new.

“All 
I 
knew 
was, 
kind 
of, 

Michigan,” Hart said. “With Coach 
English, Lloyd — that’s the only 
way that we did things. And not 
bad things. But I needed to open my 
horizons.”

For Fleck, hiring Hart wasn’t a 

tough choice. Being Michigan’s all-
time leading rusher bought him 
instant credibility with recruits, and 
Fleck had already been hearing rave 
reviews about Hart from prospects.

“(They said), ‘Mike Hart, I love 

Mike Hart.’ That’s what I continued 
to hear on the recruiting trail,” Fleck 
said.

Hart was also familiar with Fleck 

and decided the fit was right. He 
and his wife Monique packed up 
their two children and moved to 
Kalamazoo, where Hart inherited a 
stable of mostly very young running 
backs.

Among 
them 
was 
Jarvion 

Franklin, a gifted freshman from 
Tinley Park, Ill. It became clear that 
Franklin was going to carry the load, 
which left Hart with the difficult 
task of building an 18-year old into a 
workhorse tailback.

“It’s a good and a bad thing, 

because 
whatever 
they 
learn, 

you’re teaching them,” Fleck said of 
coaching true freshmen. “But the bad 
thing is, whatever you teach them, 
they’re learning. So you’ve gotta 
make sure it’s all the right things 
you’re teaching them, ‘cause they’re 
like a sponge year one. There’s 
nothing like year one.”

Fortunately 
for 
Fleck 
and 

Franklin, Hart had some firsthand 
knowledge.

When Hart was a freshman, 

Michigan’s senior starter, David 
Underwood, was injured in the 
second game of the season, against 
Notre Dame. After that game, 
the Chicago Tribune published a 
column titled “Michigan is out of the 
running,” detailing the Wolverines’ 
ground-game woes. Hart wasn’t even 
mentioned as a possible solution.

The next week, Hart burst onto 

the scene with 121 yards and never 
looked back. He and his quarterback, 
fellow freshman Chad Henne, led 
the team all the way back to the Rose 
Bowl, where Michigan lost to Texas.

So naturally, when Hart was 

tasked 
with 
preparing 
another 

running back to shock the country, 
he had credibility.

“I was leaning on him a lot,” 

Franklin said. “He was really our 
rock.”

All Franklin did last year was rush 

for 1,551 yards and 24 touchdowns, 
fourth most in the nation.

***

On the practice field at Waldo 

Stadium, Hart is now engrained in 
the Broncos’ culture, which is defined 

TONY DING/Daily

TONY DING/Daily

