Lions (5-0) to host 49ers (4-1) in battle for … NFC supremacy?No one thought that the NFL Game of the Week in mid-October would be the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Detroit Lions. Both teams finished with six wins and ten losses last year, and most experts at the beginning of the season predicted only modest improvement at best. The Niners and Lions exemplify how quickly fortunes can turn for the better (we are sadly familiar with how they can turn in the other direction).
--Sports headline in the San Jose Mercury News
The teams' recent success is of course attributable to their rosters of talented players, but the, er, lion's share of the credit has rightly gone to the coaches. In the Bay Area we read regular reports of how former Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh has instilled expectations of winning into a moribund San Francisco franchise. Detroit coach Jim Schwartz has been equally lauded.
The Great Man of History theory fell out of favor in the 20th century as thinkers became enamored by "-isms" that said individuals don't make much difference. But surely our lives would be poorer if Martin Luther King, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, or Steve Jobs had not lived. And on a much less important stage Jim Schwartz and Jim Harbaugh are showing that the theory lives on.
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