Platoon system helps build leaders

IU Coach Kevin Wilson said when he got to IU, no one truly knew the definition of a Hoosier.

“I wanted to define a Hoosier from a football perspective,” he said.

Wilson created a list of characteristics that he wanted to describe his program. He said IU was going to be accountable and confident. Competitive and demanding. Fearless and honest.

In total, he came up with 12 values to put on a billboard, but he said they were “just words on a wall” until the fifth week of the 2011 season.

The Hoosiers started Wilson’s first season 1-3. They spent the last week of September preparing for Penn State, the first Big Ten game of the Wilson era.

IU lost 16-10 to the Nittany Lions, but the Penn State week marked the inception of a fundamental change in the Hoosier football program.

Wilson saw the IU men’s basketball team working with a military group in Memorial Stadium and stopped to watch.

“I was intrigued,” he said.

Wilson asked the military group if they could work with the football team after the season and they returned the following January.

“It’s not physical training, it’s leadership training,” Wilson said, reflecting on the two-day training session.

In Wilson’s words, the instructions from the military to the team were to stand in front of the group and lead an exercise.

“If they don’t do it right, you’re leading the exercise, so you’re wrong,” he said. “Here’s the exercise, you get them to do it. Line them up, tell them what to do and make sure they accomplish the task.”

Wilson said the experience was “pretty cool” because it made the players take ownership of the team. He said he realized it wasn't that IU didn't have leaders, but the program had to develop leaders.

“We have to develop leaders like you develop a right tackle, like you develop a quarterback, like you develop a DB," he said.

Wilson had his players vote to determine the top 10 leaders on the team, and each of the top leaders would get their own “platoon.” The votes were tallied, but Wilson was unsure of what to name the platoons.

After finishing recruiting, Wilson went on a brief vacation to the Bahamas. He said that one morning around 3 a.m., he woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Wilson said that he’s not a “workaholic,” but since he was wide-awake, he started working.

“I’m not sleeping, so I start thinking,” he said. “I got these 10 leaders that I have to come up with names.”

Wilson decided that Rattlers, Giants and Cowboys weren’t good enough names. Then he remembered that he had the 12 “What’s a Hoosier?” values.

“As a matter of fact, when I looked at my leadership vote, (senior kicker) Mitch Ewald was number 12,” Wilson said. “I said these are my 12 leaders, and let’s choose those 12 values.”

He gathered the 12 leaders and had each player pick a teammate to be second-in-command, starting with Ewald. Then the leaders chose their team names from the list of Hoosier football values.

Senior safety Greg Heban said that by having eight or nine players under each leader, it breaks up the team’s accountability. He said it's his job to make sure his platoon is doing well and trusting that the other leaders are doing their jobs.

“I don’t have to worry about (senior wide receiver) Kofi (Hughes) or Mitch," Heban said. "I trust that their team is doing just as good as ours. It definitely builds the team camaraderie.”

The senior safety said that he loves the platoon leadership system. He said it creates a chain of command — from Wilson to the 12 platoon leaders to the rest of the team.

“It got to the point where the leaders are running the team,” Heban said. “He wants us to punish them.”

He said if a member of his platoon misses class, he texts him and tells
him to meet in the weight room at 6 a.m. From there, Heban puts his teammate “through a little work as a little punishment.”

“If they keep doing it, the punishments get harder,” he said. “It’s kind of nice for the leaders to step up and take charge.”

Despite the positive strides in team leadership, Wilson said that the team can still improve in terms of its on-field leadership.

“How do we lead when we play?” he asked rhetorically. “I’m interested in how we go. I think we’ve cleaned up the periphery leadership.

“We haven’t quite bridged that, and that’s what I’m interested in seeing as we grow.”

Follow reporter Andy Wittry on Twitter @AndyWittry