What Kind of Person?
November 30, 2012
The Nov. 12, 2012 issue of Fortune magazine asked 21 high-profile people from all walks of life for the one piece of wisdom that got them where they are today. The responses were typical tripe . . . except from Scott Griffith, Chairman and CEO of Zipcar. Griffith said he received this advice from his brother 15 years ago:
"You have to think about what kind of person you want to be when you’re done with this experience. Think about coming out of this a different person than you go in.”
Mr. Griffith got this advice shortly after he was diagnosed with stage 2 Hodgkins lymphoma. But he came to see how this advice could be applied to any challenge – positive or negative – in his or anybody else’s life.
Think how different things would be if Pete Rose had asked this before betting that he could get away with gambling during his Major League Baseball career; or if Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens or others had asked it before the start of their steroid-stained MLB careers.
Which takes me to more recent fallen heroes: Lance Armstrong, and Generals David Petraeus and John Allen. All three have done so much that is so good, most of which has unraveled with their ruined reputations.
If they had only asked, “What kind of person do I want to be when I’m done with this experience?”
They have come out of their experiences different than they went in, but not at all as they had hoped.
We used to say, “No good deed goes unpunished.” It’s also true these days that no bad deed goes undiscovered.
Sold Out
December 13, 2016
We are sometimes criticized for limiting the scope of school sports – for restricting long-distance travel and prohibiting national tournaments; but there is no question that we are doing the correct thing by protecting school sports from the excesses and abuses that characterize major college sports.
Across the spectrum of intercollegiate athletics, but especially in Division I football and basketball, there exists an insatiable “keep-up-with-the-Joneses” appetite.
Universities are building increasingly extravagant facilities. They are sending their “students” into increasingly expansive scheduling. But it’s never enough.
There is always another university somewhere building a bigger stadium, a fancier press box or more palatial dressing rooms, practice facilities and coaches quarters.
So-called “students” are sent across the US and beyond to play on any day at any time in order to generate revenue to keep feeding the beast.
The Big Ten knows it’s wrong, admits it, but schedules football games on Friday nights to attract larger rights fees from television.
Feeling used or abused, some of the athletes of Northwestern and then at the University of Wisconsin, talk of creating a union to protect themselves from the obvious, rampant exploitation.
And then occasionally, some college coaches dare to suggest that high schools are wrong to have regulations that reject the road that colleges have traveled, a road that has distanced athletics very far from academics in intercollegiate sports.
The intercollegiate model is not and must not be the interscholastic model. We who are sold out for educational athletics have nothing good to learn from those who have sold out for broadcast revenue.