COLLEGE COACHES ARE CEO’S, NOT MENTORS

The University of Oklahoma Football; Wells Fargo; Duke Basketball; Enron.

What do these four institutions have in common? Simple, they are (were) led by chief executive officers who are bound to one simple goal above all others – winning.

The job of all CEO’s – whether it is for a Fortune 500 company or a major college program - is to accomplish the following three tasks: 1.) Stay employed as CEO, 2.) Make money for your stakeholders, 3.) Wring the most profitability and efficiency as possible out of your employees. Accomplish these three tasks and you’re a winner.

And as such, fans and supporters of big-time college athletics would probably sleep better at night if they stopped believing in the fantasy that coaches and corporate CEO’s are re any different. They are not – and this is never truer then when controversy and scandal emerges. For a CEO and a big-time coach reacts to controversy and scandal in exactly the same way: first, protect oneself, second protect one’s operation, third protect one’s legacy.

The University of Oklahoma Football enterprise is run by its chief executive Bob Stoops – more commonly referred to by his ceremonial title – head coach. Same for CEO Mike Krzyzewsk at Duke. The title coach is bestowed upon these men because it is familiar to fans and steeped in the historic trappings of American sports going back more than a century. But make no mistake, these two famous and public men are chief executive officers in the exact same way that John Stumpf was CEO of Wells Fargo (before being force to resign amid scandal) and Ken Lay was CEO of disgraced energy giant Enron.

Currently, CEO’s Stoops and Krzyzewski are embroiled in scandals involving employees at their place of business. For Stoops the controversy surrounds his comments and actions related to an employee of the football program who punched a female student in the face and broke her jaw. That employee, Joe Mixon was disciplined a couple of years ago, but allowed to return to the football program because his value to the overall operation was deemed worthy of the public relations backlash of his actions. Exacerbating the controversy has been CEO Stoops’ comments related to the employee’s criminal behavior, saying that he deserved a second chance.

For CEO Krzyzewski, he is dealing with an employee, Grayson Allen, who has repeatedly tripped opponents during games and also acted petulantly on the bench. Krzyzewski, after conferring with his legal and public relations counsel, has suspended the athlete indefinitely; a strategic move allowing the CEO to modify the duration of the punishment dependent on public and stakeholder sentiment in the coming days and weeks.

CEO’s Stumpf and Lay also oversaw employees who perpetrated crimes and violated rules. The only difference between the businesses and the athletic programs is scale. Wells Fargo and Enron featured corrupt culture and employee misbehavior on a national level.

Similarly, when the scandals became public, Stoops, Krzyzewski, Stumpf and Lay all reached for their CEO playbook on how to handle a crisis which relies on a strategic balance of bold declaratives with flaccid silence. As such, you get congressional testimony and post-game press conferences which feature the following:

·         Virtuous proclamations about company/team culture (no acknowledgment of how this culture attracted and coddled said employees in the first place).

·         Forcefully declarations that any employee misbehavior will not be tolerated (deafening silence about how there is always a sliding scale of punishment based on an employee/players worth to the organization).

·         Vigorous assertions of how the company/team will move forward toward correction and healing (unanswered questions about how the misbehavior would have been allowed to continue were it not for outside discovery).

Indeed, it probably is for the best that we finally acknowledge that big-time sports tracks to the same amoral compass as big-time business. Corporations don’t exist to make our communities better, improve the lives of employees and provide outstanding products and services to customers. They exist to win and by and large we all accept that fact. So too is the reason why Oklahoma Football and Duke Basketball exist, to win. And the men in charge of those enterprises are hired and fired to ensure they stay in the winning column – broken jaws and tripped opponents be damned.

The only final sin of big-time college coaching and big-time corporate stewardship is to lose. For a losing record is the only surefire way to lose one’s job, one’s program and one’s legacy.