Learning About Non-reaction from Coach Cal

I'm learning a lot from this guy.

I've watched just about every minute of of NCAA Men's Division I Basketball coverage this year, as I often do when I'm in Lexington. Apart from the excitement of the games, I'm extremely impressed with the character of the coaches at this level of play.

Particularly Coach John Calipari of our Kentucky Wildcats. We get to see a bit more of him in local news coverage here in Lexington, and we're the better for it.

Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success: Intentness

This article was originally published by Technorati on 19 June 2010 as a Simply Spirited/Sports feature. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

The position of every block in Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success is significant. None more significant perhaps than the placement of the "Intentness" block directly on top of the foundational "Enthusiasm."

Intentness, Coach Wooden wrote in The Essential Wooden: A Lifetime of Lessons on Leaders and Leadership "is the ability to resist temptation and stay the course, to concentrate on your objective with determination and resolve."

He also describes what Intentness is not: "Impatience is wanting too much too soon. Intentness doesn't involve wanting something."

Friendship Foundational to Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success

This article was originally published by Technorati on 15 June 2010 as a Simply Spirited/Sports feature. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

As I put pen to paper to write about Coach Wooden's views on Friendship, I find myself researching more heavily the legacy of Adolph Rupp, Hall of Fame coach of the University of Kentucky (my alma mater) from 1930 to 1972. The two coaches' styles could not have been more different. Coach Rupp was colorful, foul-mouthed, a scotch drinker. Wooden--the opposite.

Wooden's players seem to have universally loved him as a coach and as a man. Rupp--the opposite.

Industriousness and Enthusiasm Cornerstones of Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success

This article was originally published by Technorati on 11 June 2010 as a Simply Spirited/Sports feature. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

"Industriousness" is the first cornerstone of Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success. Industriousness is more than just hard work, though it necessarily includes that. In Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections, Coach Wooden writes, "I call it industriousness to make very clear it involves more than just showing up and going through the motions."

There is a right amount of preparation for every endeavor, whether you're a basketball player, a writer or a plumber. The key is the quality you put into both preparation and participation. Quality effort can only come from an emphasis on the present moment, whether in the field house or on the floor for a Final Four contest. What you are doing now is alway the only true measure of success, and only if you are doing the very best you can do in that moment.

In the coach's words, "You can work without being industrious but you cannot be industrious without word." Work plus quality equals Industriousness.

Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success - An Overview

This article was originally published by Technorati on 7 June 2010 as a Simply Spirited/Sports feature. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Coach Wooden's pyramid is instructive not only by the individual blocks in contains, but also by its over all structure. Every block is placed particularly.

The structure stands on a foundation, the cornerstones of which are "Industriousness" and "Enthusiasm." Simply pointing this out teaches a great life lesson. When Industriousness is combined with Enthusiasm in any venture, self-evidently, we are well along the path toward success (we will have more to say about this in a future post).

"Skill" sits at the heart of the pyramid, pointing like an arrow at its apex, "Competitive Greatness." Again, we say, "Yes!" that makes sense, without further explanation. The centrality of skill can never be discounted if Competitive Greatness is to be supported.

The pyramid is shorn up on each side by Patience and Faith.

The former is easy to understand in terms of Coach Wooden's career. He spent 17 years coaching at UCLA, developing his philosophy, before he won his first national championship. His commitment to daily improvement over time lead eventually to exponential success that ended only when he retired. Patient, daily improvement as a coach, like compounded interest, paid off to a degree that even Einstein could not quite have gotten his mind around.

A Series on Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success a Fitting Eulogy

This article was originally published by Technorati on 6 June 2010 as a Simply Spirited/Sports feature. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

If you seek truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found Truth, you need not fear being defeated.

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, CXLIX

God wishes to say a few words in epitaph about John Wooden and He has asked to do it through my computer.

Anyone who cared enough about the subject of this article to click on its link wouldn't be surprised by the foregoing statement. For anyone old enough to remember Coach Wooden in his prime (at 45 I just barely make this category), and for the rest who are aware of his legend, it is clear that he played, coached and vanquished mightily the simple game of basketball for one simple purpose: to show the rest of us the Way, with a capital "W."

4 Truisms of Success as Taught by Butler Coach Brad Stevens

This article was originally published by Technorati on 8 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Nothing was more compelling about this week's David v. Goliath NCAA Men's Basketball Championship than the story of the meteoric rise of Butler coach Brad Stevens. At just thirty-three years of age, he joins an elite cadre of young coaches in a number of different categories.

Stevens is the youngest coach ever in a Final Four, save for the legendary Bobby Knight. He's the youngest in a championship game except for one of Knight's predecessors at Indiana, Branch McCracken. And Stevens holds the record for most wins in his first three years as a head coach, besting the likes of Jim Boeheim, and, well, everybody else.

Brad Stevens' rise to prominence in the basketball world highlights four truisms of success.

Incentivize Big Dance to Improve Academics

This article was originally published by Technorati on 17 March 2010.

Toward a more enlightened approach to college basketball . . .

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reportedly wants to ban teams from the NCAA men's basketball tournament for poor academic performance, according to ABC News. While Duncan doesn't feel he can compel schools to comply with this idea, he intends to urge them to do so.

The move, should it be applied to this year's Big Dance, would rule out number 1 seed University of Kentucky (my alma mater), the University of Louisville (from my home state; what a proud moment for me) and the University of Tennessee (probably tainted by its long border with my home state) and at least nine other teams, based on low graduation rates alone.

If the Obama administration were serious about this initiative (which it isn't), surely the Department of Education could come up with a (dis)incentive package that would turn the heads of university presidents.

Allow me to suggest a few options. First, why not name an Academic Champion of the NCAA tournament? Give the school with the highest graduation rate/average GPA to reach the tournament a banner, a trophy and a cash prize.