Fully eleven of Michigan’s 25 varsity teams lead the Big Ten in conference titles—which is even more remarkable when you consider it represents not merely success, but sustained excellence spanning over a century and across a broad spectrum of sports, from field hockey to football, produced by hundreds of coaches and thousands of athletes. Those coaches have shared a few traits that have made Michigan’s success possible: a love of Michigan—very few coaches want to go anywhere else after they arrive in Ann Arbor—and an unwavering emphasis on building “a program that would last,” as hockey coach Red Berenson put it, “not just a winning team.”It’s a phrase you hear often from Michigan’s best coaches. While athletes talk about playing on a winning team, coaches and athletic directors talk about building enduring programs. It’s the difference between a couple good years on the field and a couple great decades on and off it.“You’ve built a great program,” says Michigan athletic director Bill Martin, “when you’ve achieved competitive and academic excellence—and can sustain that, year after year. That’s my vision.”To test Martin’s premise, you could look at Michigan’s track, swimming, or gymnastics teams—men’s or women’s. Or, for that matter, almost any of Michigan’s 25 varsity teams, which as a group consistently finish in the top five of all college athletic departments, despite competing against schools with ten more varsity programs. How do they do it?

1: A little temporary blindness goes a long way

You might think it’s best to know everything about the job when you take over a Michigan program—but you’d be wrong. It turns out a little ignorance can be a wonderful thing.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Berenson admits today, looking back on his first days on the job 25 years ago. “I thought we’d turn things around in a couple years. [But] I didn’t know about recruiting, about networking, or about the skill level I’d be dealing with. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job—and that would have been a horrible mistake.”As striking as that might sound coming from the man who’s set the NCAA record for most consecutive tournament appearances with 19—and counting—what’s more surprising is how many Michigan coaches echo Berenson’s confession.When Bev Plocki became the women’s gymnastics coach in 1990, she knew the team had only won a single Big Ten title in its first ten years, but she was stunned by the facilities she inherited, the euphemistically named Coliseum. It housed the hockey team from 1923 to 1973, but looks less like a rink than a warehouse. But that didn’t stop Plocki’s teams from winning 10 Big Ten titles in that building.Likewise, Bo Schembechler recalled, “When I got here, I was shocked. Our locker room was on the second floor of Yost Field House. We sat in rusty, folding chairs and hung our clothes on nails hammered into a two-by-four bolted into the wall. Those were our ‘lockers’!”

2: Have a vision

Michigan’s coaches might have been partially blind to the challenge in front of them, but when it came to what they wanted their programs to be, their vision was crystal clear. When Berenson was introduced as the new hockey coach, he said, “My first goal is to change the image of the program. I have a good feel for Michigan, the tradition, the excellence, and what I call a ‘Michigan kid.'””I had a lot to learn, but I knew what I thought the Michigan program should be,” he said years later. “I wanted the boys to play an exciting, clean style, to take advantage of the academic opportunities here, and to build something we could be proud of.”I also had a lot of pride. I hadn’t been back here in a long time, but I just didn’t feel we should be losing to Ferris State—or Michigan State, for that matter.” Carol Hutchins has won an NCAA championship, 11 Big Ten regular season titles, and more games—1,083—than any coach in Michigan history. She explains it this way: “I knew right away that our program, first and foremost, has to be about really good kids who want to fight for Michigan,” she explains. “Almost any struggles we’ve had are the result of kids who are not about Michigan, but themselves. You know what? It’s not about you. Michigan didn’t start when you got here, and it won’t end when you leave. That might not be for everybody, but we’re not supposed to be. “We are still successful because we never forgot that is the key ingredient.”Even in a bad year a good program is a good program. And you spend years to get to that point.”

3: Values before victories

Hutchins’ comment speaks to a larger truth: if you try to put victories before values, pretty soon you won’t have much of either. When Martin hires a new coach to take over teams that haven’t been successful recently, he’s been known to tell them, “You don’t have to win right away. In fact, if you do, we might be concerned.”Michigan’s top coaches tend to be very impatient about instilling the values they want to see in their charges—but that requires them to be far more patient waiting for the wins to come. It’s not only the right trade-off, it’s the smart trade-off. When the men’s basketball team didn’t control its boosters and players, the results were disastrous. Although the team got to the NCAA finals in 1992 and 1993, the booster payment scandal cost Chris Webber his reputation, head coach Steve Fisher his job, and the team years of probation. Ironically, even their victories disappeared when U-M retroactively “vacated” 170 games from five seasons and pulled down its Final Four banners from Crisler Arena.”Just as every good team is bigger than any one athlete,” Plocki says, “every good program is bigger than any one season. Sticking by your principles might cost you in the short run, but you’ll be better off in the long run.”Today, third year men’s basketball coach John Beilein remembers confronting one of his top players at a previous stop about his academic record. “It was practically a rap sheet: ‘September 14, late for class. September 16: late for meeting. September 17: missed exam.'”He said, and I quote: ‘Historically, I’ve had trouble getting to class on time.'”I said, ‘Historically, those players have not made my team.'”Beilein’s resolve was tested last season when the Wolverines were about to go into overtime at Iowa in a crucial contest. Michigan’s star player, Manny Harris, seemed less than enthusiastic about playing the extra period. So, Beilein benched him, knowing full well the fans and the press would crucify him if they lost—which they did. Beilein took the heat, but in the next game Harris led the team with 27 points in a huge win over nationally ranked Purdue, on the Wolverines’ way to their first NCAA berth in eleven years. “Happens all the time,” Hutchins says. “You can’t win with two sets of rules. When we have upheld that principle, and sent a star to the bench, we’ve had some of our best performances.”

4: Make Hay When the Sun Shines

At a lesser athletic department, winning would be an end in itself. At Michigan, the victories merely provide the means to build the infrastructure needed to stay on top. That’s why Berenson got his first renovation after winning his first NCAA title; Plocki’s gymnasts got the unequaled Shepherd Center after their 10th Big Ten title; and the softball and baseball teams built their beautiful ballparks after they both won titles in 2007. Rich Rodriguez defines it this way: “When you build a program, and you build it right, it’s built to last even after your gone,” he says. “Look at Michigan football. When I came in there were so many things that were already built into the foundation a long time ago by Fielding Yost, Fritz Crisler, Bo, Moe and Lloyd [Carr]. “Everything you see going up now—the new indoor facility, the stadium renovation—started before we got here. We don’t need fancier stuff than everyone else has, but those facilities needed to be upgraded for us to compete with the rest of the Big Ten in terms of recruiting and developing the best athletes. “And I like the message it sends to our players. I don’t want any sense of entitlement—they have to earn this privilege—but when they do, I want them to see that at Michigan, it’s not just talk. Everything really is first class. “Expectations come with that—and that’s good, too.”

5: Don’t get complacent

Most Michigan coaches say one of the hardest steps of building an enduring program is the last one: Staying on top. It’s always exciting to attack the castle. Defending it is harder. And when you’re Michigan, you show up to any game, match or meet with a target on your back. And, of course, college teams change every year. That can be a challenge—but also a blessing, because it forces coaches to keep things fresh. “Every team’s chemistry is different,” Plocki says. “When you look at them as all being the same, you take things for granted, and their performance starts to fall off. What works one season is not going to work the next.””I don’t think [staying hungry] is ever an issue with the coaches,” Beilein says. “But with our players it’s a constant challenge. We were hunters last year, we are hunters this year, and we will always be hunters as long as we’re playing at Michigan.”Add it all up, and Michigan has one more advantage few other schools can leverage. “Many coaches are on a career ladder, but at Michigan we are only trying to win for Michigan,” Hutchins says. “When coaches get to Michigan you’re not shopping around for the next job. Why would you want to go anywhere else? This is your last stop. And that’s why we take such an interest in each other’s programs, and try to help each other.”Once you find that, it’s special.”