by Keith Ellis
They call it "March Madness". Every year about this
time, the sixty-four best teams in major college
basketball square off in the NCAA Basketball
Tournament, one of the most hotly contested
tournaments in all of sports. Many are called but only
one is chosen, and when the smoke clears, the team left
standing is declared the National Champion.
How competitive is this tournament? Since 1975, only
once has a team won back-to-back National
Championships. So it's remarkable to realize that
during the twelve years prior to 1975, a single college
won seven National Championships in a row, and a
total of ten championships in twelve years.
When that streak of championships began, I was a
freshman in high school. The man who coached those
teams was my hero. He was known as the winningest
coach in the history of college basketball. Looking
back, I would say that's an understatement.
Since he retired in 1975, only one major college team
has gone undefeated through an entire basketball
season. But his teams accomplished this four times.
They compiled the longest winning streak in the history
of the game: eighty-eight straight victories. That's two
and a half years without a loss. And in perhaps their
greatest achievement, over a span of eight years,
competing against the very best teams in the country,
who were playing their very best basketball, at the time
of year when a single loss would have meant the season
was over, this man's teams won forty-seven NCAA
Tournament games in a row.
As if those numbers aren't impressive enough, consider
this: the man coached in an era when freshman couldn't
play on the varsity, so he had to replace his entire team
every three years. Every three years he and his
remarkable coaching staff had to start from scratch. In
winning seven straight National Championships, they
had to do it with three completely different sets of
players. That is the stuff of legend. The legend's name
is John Wooden. He was the head coach of the UCLA
basketball team.
Whether you're a sports fan or not, John Wooden leaps
out at you as one of the greatest achievers of our time.
For those looking to unlock the mysteries of human
potential, Wooden's life should be required reading.
His accomplishments in his line of work are so far
beyond what anyone else has even approached that they
shout this question: "How did he do it?" I've been
asking myself that for twenty years. And I've finally
found the answer.
Years ago I read a magazine interview with Coach
Wooden in which he was asked how he scouted the
competition before a game. He said, in effect: We don't
worry about the competition; we worry about
ourselves. We don't go out to try to beat somebody; we
go out to play the very best we can.
There it was in black and white, staring up at me from
the pages of that magazine. It was John Wooden's secret
of the ages, the answer to the question: "How did he do
it?" But I didn't understand it. I wasn't ready for it. I
thought that the heart and soul of competitive athletics
was to know your opponent. Wasn't that why coaches
and athletes spent hours watching films of their
competition? I thought that Wooden must not have been
telling the whole story. His "secret" didn't make sense
to me, so I ignored it.
A couple of years ago, I had the privilege to preview
an intriguing new cassette album called The Pyramid of
Success, from Nightingale-Conant. The "Pyramid" was
created by John Wooden in the 1930s. He has been
teaching it to others ever since. It elegantly describes
his philosophy about life, work, and success.
Most of the album features Jim Harrick, the then current
coach of the UCLA men's basketball team, a protege
and close friend of John Wooden. Harrick's team won
the National Championship in 1995, the first for UCLA
in the 20 years since Wooden retired. So Coach
Harrick was a natural choice to do the album. But the
cassette that really caught my eye was the one that
featured John Wooden himself, being interviewed about
his "Pyramid of Success".
On the way home from the office that evening I popped
Wooden's tape in my stereo before I even had the car in
gear. What a treat it was to hear his familiar voice
sharing stories about his youth, his teaching career, and
his remarkable years as a basketball coach. I was in
heaven listening to that tape, cruising through the
star-draped countryside of beautiful Rappahannock
County, where I used to live.
Then Coach Wooden began to talk about competition.
He said that he told his basketball players not to worry
about the other team, but to worry about themselves. He
said that if they played their very best, they would be
successful. If they didn't play their best, then they would
never be successful, no matter how many games they
won.
It was deja-vu. I thought back to that article I had read
so many years before, and I felt the same reaction I felt
then. Wooden must be leaving something out. Surely he
must have worried about his competition. Surely he
must have scouted the teams he had to face. After all,
that's what everybody else did...
And then I finally struck brain. For twenty years I had
been trying to figure out what made John Wooden
different. And he had been telling me all along. What
made him different was this: the winningest coach in
the history of college basketball didn't worry about
winning. He worried about making the effort to do his
best. He didn't do what everybody else did, so he didn't
limit himself to their results. He didn't compete with
everybody else, so everybody else couldn't compete
with him.
I was still in my car when this finally sunk in, but I
started scribbling notes as fast as I could write. That's
not such a smart thing to do at 60 miles an hour,
especially at night, but I couldn't wait long enough to
slow down. I had to get on paper the answer to the
question I had been asking myself for twenty years. I
had to find exactly the right way to phrase it. I had to
reduce it to a simple thought, a simple rule for success.
And then Coach Wooden did it for me. He said:
"Success is peace of mind that can be
obtained only from the self-satisfaction of
knowing that you have made the effort to do
the very best of which you are capable."
I rewound the tape and played that phrase again. And
again. And again. I felt like I had just discovered the
Hope diamond. John Wooden was teaching me
something that I thought I learned when I was in the Boy
Scouts. But it never sank in---until that moment.
Success is making the effort to do your best. Do that,
and you can never fail. Don't do that, and you can never
succeed.
What's so revolutionary about the idea of making the
effort to do your best? Just this: the reason Coach
Wooden was such a consistent winner was that he
never settled for winning. Winning wasn't enough. Even
winning National Championships wasn't enough.
Wooden wanted more. He wanted his teams to play
their best. Every game. Against weak teams and against
strong teams. He knew there were too many ways to
win a game you didn't deserve to win, too many ways
to win without giving your best effort. And he knew
there were too many ways to lose when you didn't give
your best effort.
It was that effort that Wooden was looking for. That
was the reason to compete. Not to win, but to make the
effort to be your best. To make the most of the talent
God has given you. To make the effort to become the
best human being you can become. Wooden taught--and
proved--that if you make that effort, winning will take
care of itself.
Think how much higher his standard is, than is the
standard that most people live by. In Wooden's world,
you have to do more than come out on top; you have to
make the effort to do your best. Winning is the
by-product of that effort. Winning isn't the cake; it's just
the icing. The cake is peace of mind, the peace of mind
that can come only from the self-knowledge that you
have made the effort to do your best.
Imagine how this might play in your own life. Have you
ever gotten an "A" on a test you didn't study for? Have
you ever been given a raise from your boss, even
though you knew in your heart that you hadn't earned it?
Have you ever won a sale that you didn't deserve?
Instead of winning, what if from now on your objective
was to make the effort to do the very best of which you
are capable? How much better would you perform?
More importantly, how much better would you feel?
What would your life be like if you refused to settle just
for winning, but insisted instead on the peace of mind
that comes from the self-satisfaction of knowing that
you have made the effort to do your best?
When you think about it, there is a profound irony that
surrounds the career of John Wooden. As a coach, he
was measured by winning. But he won by refusing to
measure himself by winning. He insisted on a higher
standard, the standard of making the effort to do your
best.
Why is that a higher standard? Because we can't fool
ourselves. So much of what passes for success is a
matter of how we appear to other people. But Wooden
has always been concerned with how we appear to
ourselves. Are we giving our best? We might be able to
fool others with half an effort, but in our own heart we
will always know the truth. That is the truth he thinks
we should live by.
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