This past weekend this country lost an iconic educator and coach with the death of North Carolina’s Dean Smith.
While Smith’s long-declining health had kept him far from the spotlight for some time now, I believe his passing should once again focus our attention to the core values of his life’s work.
The world of big-time college sports needs this reminder: Dean Smith humbly stood for equality, and education plus honest evaluation and preparation for life for the young men he coached.
Above all, what struck me was a letter that I had seen before but re-surfaced this week. It was a letter written to Michael Jordan while he was at UNC.
In a letter to an established player who had already hit a game-winning shot in the National Championship game Smith outlined eight areas for improvement. It covered every facet of Jordan’s game from defense, to free throws, to ball fakes, passing and focusing on the fundamentals.
At the end of the letter Coach Smith wrote “if you improve on these items we mentioned, you will be a much better basketball player and, consequently our team should be better and have a chance to win it all in Seattle next year.”
Individual improvement for the good of the team and the accomplishment of a team goal.
How times have changed. There was no flowery rhetoric of how great Jordan was already. Today coaches and players spend a lot of time on style, on social media, “branding”, on camera hyping themselves and designing/accessorizing uniforms. The substance of Smith’s letter is what makes good players and teams become great ones.
You know what else was NOT mentioned in this letter? The NBA.
College basketball and football game day coverage includes analysis of the “pro prospects” on the field. It is a constant discussion on TV and in recruiting — particularly in the days of college basketball’s era of “one and done.” It is the reality of big-time college sports in 2015 but it starts early in high school.
Just over a week ago college football’s National Signing Day came amid unprecedented coverage and celebrations across the country. Workplace computers, tablets and smartphones tuned in to recruiting web sites to see the latest must-have recruits announce where they would be playing college football. The day has taken on mythic proportions largely benefiting the media’s bottom line on what would be an otherwise random Wednesday in February.
The hype may be exciting but it comes with a price. The over-selling of reputations gives an over-inflated sense of importance to players who have yet to attend a single class on campus or play one second of football or basketball.
Some cannot handle the sense of self-importance we as a society give to them that can fuel over-the-top behavior. And we are the first to condemn them when problems surface. Big-time college sports are covered with the same intensity of the NFL and NBA, but we forget that the “men” playing these games are 18-22 years old and may make mistakes young men their age tend to make.
Their missteps become part of the national sports news cycle. Despite their youth, we expect the same levels of maturity and behavior that we expect from professionals who earn millions of dollars each season.
It is an unrealistic and unfair expectation, and those seeds are sown in a recruiting spotlight that starts hyping players as young as 15 or 16 years of age. It is an unhealthy obsession for fans, but it is potentially even more damaging to the young men who believe the hype, or worse yet fail to live up to it.
Those who fail to meet our expectations are forever branded as “busts” for failing to meet expectations that we imposed upon them.
For the record, if Michael Jordan was in high school now, he wouldn’t have appeared on anyone’s top freshmen list. He was battling just to make and become a contributor on his high school team. Think about that and think about Dean Smith the next time you look at that recruiting list.
Dean Smith was the real deal. I never met him, but admired him for years. In his manner with his players, in the way he was a father and mentor to them we saw an example of what it was to be a collegiate coach. It was never about winning the recruiting rankings, or selling the NBA or win-at-all costs.
Certainly many of his recruiting classes were highly acclaimed, certainly he had many players go to the NBA, and certainly he won but those were not the only goals. He strove to bring young men together, challenged them to work hard, to respect each other and to become something bigger as a unit than they could ever be alone.
Big-time college sports are at a major crossroads facing major challenges defining what the amateur model will look like in years to come.
At a time like this we would be wise to recall Smith’s example. He built a consistent program — not just teams — and he built better lives not just athletic careers.
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