It’s safe to say that neither Lincoln Riley (formerly Head Coach at Oklahoma University) nor Brian Kelly (formerly Head Coach at Notre Dame) will be invited back for anything like “Honor Our Coaches Day.” Both left their positions in less than honorable fashion last week.
They coached in programs that are the envy of many in collegiate football. Oklahoma University hasn’t had a coach leave for another college job since 1947. Notre Dame hasn’t had it happen since 1907. I know it’s a new day: collegiate football is big business, a billion-dollar enterprise. Failing to recognize that is to imagine living in a bygone age. “It’s a different time,” they tell me, “‘ things” are “different,” they remind me, meaning circumstances dictate a different modus operandi for those vocationally involved in big-time college sports.
True, collegiate football lost its amateur mystique years ago, long before these two coaches sneaked out of town for more lucrative salaries. But, regardless of the time in which we live, or the dollars and cents (In these cases millions and millions of dollars) on the negotiating table, some things remain the same, things like character and integrity. How you leave a place—with or without character and integrity—has everything to do with what you bring to a place, with or without those same virtues.
You can’t blame Coaches Riley or Kelly for moving on for bigger money. But, it’s the way they exited that is disturbing. Both coaches had denied having any interest in other schools and vouched their loyalty to the team they coached…right up until they had their new contract signed, sealed, and delivered and were on private jets to their new location. It’s wasn’t a good look for college football.
Kelly left his team with an 11-1 record and at the time, still having the possibility of making the College Football Playoffs. The College Football Playoff Selection Committee does consider matters like coaching changes and injuries to key players, both of which are critical to a team’s success. So, Kelly left his team in the lurch, announcing to them that his love for them was “limitless,” and that he was “so proud” of what they “have accomplished.” Shortly after, he was on his way to Baton Rouge.
Riley said goodbye to his team in a two-minute farewell, leaving his team blindsided, taking key staff with him, leaving the squad without key personnel as they try and prepare for a post-season game. And he has flipped numerous OU recruiting commits to USC. When he proclaimed that he would make USC a college football “mecca,” OU defensive lineman and team captain, Isaiah Thomas, fired back, “He told us (OU) that last week.”
Both schools will rebound; each has hired very able replacements.
Let us reflect on the larger issue here: the story is about the influence of an institution, in this case, football, on young men in their late teens and early twenties and their character development. Character and integrity will endure long after an athlete’s prowess on the football field has vanished, and the coach has retired. Loyalty to others, commitment to duty that is contingent on money is neither loyalty or commitment to duty.
We would all do well to ponder the words of the legendary basketball coach at UCLA, John Wooden, who knew a thing or two about success, winning 10 NCAA basketball championships in a 12-year period. It was Wooden who said, “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
Working on character and integrity is more challenging than winning games because it’s a lifelong project. But those timeless virtues determine who we are in our life journey, whether you are an athlete or not.
Who we are in leaving is who we are in arriving. It is life’s ultimate litmus test, especially in that final departure and arrival. So, my friend, let us live in such a way that we give the people where we arrive something worthy of applause for the ages, not just for a temporary, though more lucrative, new deal.