RSS 2.0 Feed
January 2012, Leadership
The Leadership Challenge for Athletic Directors: Clarify Your Values
In The Leadership Challenge, authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner interviewed thousands of people to list the leaders they most admired. The most frequently named were Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. These leaders were viewed as having a set of values to which they had an unwavering commitment. They personified the authors adage that, “If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.”
A leader must set the example by aligning actions with shared values. To be effective a leader must be fully committed to the organization’s values. A leader must show others by their actions how serious they are about the organization’s values and standards. Ultimately, a leader’s credibility depends on this example. Someone once said, “I’d rather see a sermon than to hear one.”
Values are important to moral development, and they help prepare leaders and organizations to make ethical decisions under difficult circumstances. Having a clear set of personal values helps us build the credibility and trust that facilitate leadership. Principled leaders have more credibility and engender a higher level of trust. Failure to act in accord with your values is a failure of leadership.
This important leadership principle has been sorely lacking over the last few months during this period of conference realignment. Since NCAA President Mark Emmert convened a group of presidents for a summit in Indianapolis in early August to discuss ways to enhance the image of college athletics, the exact opposite has transpired – and absolute bedlam has come to college sports.
Back in 2003, Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg made the following statement in response to the departure of Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech from the Big East to the Atlantic Coast Conference: "This is a case that involves broken commitments, secret dealings, breaches of fiduciary responsibility, the misappropriation of conference opportunities and predatory attempts to eliminate competition." He was right on the money then, and regrettably his statement characterizes the recent spate of conference realignment, including the Panthers move to the ACC. His 2011 actions do not seem to be aligned with the values he publically espoused in 2003.
Demonstrating either the ultimate in chutzpah or naiveté, Syracuse Chancellor Nancy Cantor told ESPN's Gene Wojciechowski that one of the reasons for the move to the ACC was the fit it presented for their Olympic sports. "I would say that our concerns are really forward looking with respect to the ACC," said Cantor. "The issue for us is that we have increasingly strong Olympic sports across the board, women sports – the ACC is a wonderful match for that for us. And we really are obviously very excited about that."Are you kidding me? That response utterly lacks credibility. No wonder things are out of control when a campus leader is trying to sell the public that kind of disingenuous drivel.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world. It’s chaotic,” former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese told host Chris Russo on Mad Dog Radio. “The presidents took over college athletics in 1990. You would think there would be integrity and loyalty and responsibility and congeniality. Those words don’t even exist.” Aren’t those the values that underpin college athletics? What are we teaching our student-athletes with the actions of recent weeks?
As a former Division I athletic director I fully appreciate what is at stake regarding realignment. Presidents are concerned that the financial health of their athletic programs depends on appropriate conference membership and the resulting media deals and revenue distribution. So, I understand that conference changes may have to happen and that historically important and geographically proximate rivalries may have to be abandoned – but how you do it is critically important. Class, dignity, respect for others have to be at the heart of how difficult decisions are made.
While presidents deserve the share of the blame for their collective failure to handle conference realignment, NCAA President Mark Emmert has sat on the sideline doing his best imitation of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s lack of leadership during the steroid era. While it is true that the NCAA does not have any specific authority over conference affiliation, it seems unreasonable for the NCAA President to stand by and not use his bully pulpit aggressively to try and encourage better behavior.
Great leadership connects actions with beliefs. The college sports industry has failed to distinguish itself during the realignment shuffle. Perhaps the Knight Commission had it all wrong twenty years ago when it urged college presidents to lead a reform movement to change college athletics. To date, presidents have shown that they are not collectively up to the task.
How can we expect student-athletes to follow complex, illogical and institutionally self-serving NCAA rules when our presidents have demonstrated their consistent failure to even follow the golden rule: Treat others as you want to be treated.
Dave O'Brien J.D. has been a college sports executive and educator for over 25 years. He served as a Division I athletic director at Long Beach State University, Temple University and Northeastern University for 16 years (1991-2007).
O'Brien is currently the Director of the Sports Management Program at Drexel University where he also teaches at the undergraduate, graduate and law school levels. In addition to his academic position, O'Brien is the managing partner of the O'Brien Sports Group which provides a wide range of consulting services to the college sports industry, including NCAA rules compliance, risk management audits, business support services, executive recruitment, training workshops and more. He is also an editor of College Sports Business News.
O'Brien is active nationally in sports law matters as co-author of a monthly column on college sports law issues published in College Athletics and the Law and as a consultant on sports topics including pay equity, retaliation, harassment, Title IX, and coaching contracts.
Prior to becoming an athletic administrator, O'Brien served in a variety of roles in higher education, which included assistant to the president for legal and legislative affairs at Montclair State University and the assistant vice president for administration and finance at Long Beach State. He also served on the legislative staff of the New Jersey Senate and practiced law in New Jersey.
O'Brien is a graduate of Moravian College and Seton Hall Law School, and has also attained certification from the Sports Management Institute as part of its inaugural class. He can be reached at dobrien@collegesportsbusinessnews.com