Where are the Adults?
February 2, 2016
According to Jim Tucker, a certified financial planner and National Football League Players Association registered player financial advisor, writing for the Jan. 11-17 issue of Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal: “... university presidents, trustees and athletic directors are failing at their job of upholding the ethical standards of their universities.” They exploit, rather than educate, the so-called “student-athlete.”
He asks the right questions: “Where are the adults at our colleges and universities? Where are the adults to say no to football games on a day other than Saturday? Where are the adults to say no to athletic conferences that crisscross the country? Or adults to say no to a 35-plus-game college basketball season with excessive travel and missed class time?”
Behind the glitz and glamor of major college athletics is a program without, it appears, any rudder but the pursuit of more revenue, and less and less relationship to the educational mission of the sponsoring institutions.
I wouldn’t care about this. Except that the best predictor of what may go wrong in school sports is a look at what already has gone awry in college sports.
Those who pressure school sports to copy the college or AAU model miss the lessons that are all around us. We do not have to make the same mistakes.
FBI Tips
July 14, 2014
In a June 9, 2014 National Public Radio story about the first nine months of James B. Comey’s 10-year term as FBI director, two leadership tips emerged that may apply to all types of organizations.
The first is that since the 9/11 tragedy, the FBI has had to change from an agency created to catch bank robbers to an agency that prevents crime before it occurs.
While all comparisons pale next to 9/11, many organizations have had some kind of crisis that demonstrates dramatically that the organization must change fundamentally in order to serve its overarching purpose in a changing world.
It requires an entirely different mindset, perhaps, an entirely reordered set of priorities.
The second point raised in the interview, and very likely the key to accomplishing the first, is that the FBI is now focused on the biggest steps, not just the easiest ones. This is what Director Comey sees is necessary for the FBI to become the agency our nation needs in today’s world.
The required response to a defining-moment crisis cannot be cosmetic change, but must be almost genetic change. Hard change – a focus on deep, systemic issues, not superficial matters.
It requires an entirely different level of commitment than existed before.