Denying Eyes

The NFL draft begins tonight – which means a few young men barely of drinking age will wear $1,000 suits and smile broadly for the ESPN cameras, rejoicing that they are instant millionaires… and fortunate not to be selected by the Oakland Raiders.

A peculiarity of this annual rite of football passage is how personnel directors and draft experts often skip right past a player’s four-year record of success on the field and downgrade him because a 40-yard dash time was one-tenth of a second slow. Similarly, they’ll elevate someone who delivered average game results to near superstar status because he excelled in the 3-cone drill.

“Yeah, I know he set rushing records down there in Florida, but he’s too small to compete at the next level and he’s a step slow. He might have a brief career as a backup. That’s why we project a low second-round selection for Emmitt Smith.”

A similar approach for determining potential results occurs in our education system. This week here in Texas students are enduring the annual TAKS test – a standardized assessment that for some determines whether they advance to the next grade.

While the intentions are good – see what students know – there are two inherent problems with this tactic. First, teachers spend an inordinate amount of time ‘teaching to the test’ because they are judged on how well their class performs. Schools hold TAKS pep rallies throughout the year to motivate and encourage kids. Second, students miss out on the opportunity to broaden their learning, because, as one of our child’s teachers said, ‘There isn’t enough time for that with all this TAKS stuff.’

Instead of judging success on whether kids know the methods and tricks for answering multiple-choice questions, education leaders should measure how well their students are prepared for futures in this fast-changing world.

Once that’s accomplished, perhaps they will do away with the SAT as the biggest determining factor for college acceptance. From my experience – both as a graduate and the father of a student at the University of Texas – how you perform one Saturday during your senior year of high school has little to do with your ultimate success in college.

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Just Believe

Kentucky: 14th trip to the Final Four and seven national championships. Connecticut: fourth trip in a dozen years with two national championships. Butler: second consecutive trip. VCU: are you kidding me?

Quick… name a former VCU player who made it to the NBA? (There have only been seven; the one you may have heard of is Gerald Henderson who played 13 seasons. Kentucky is only slightly ahead with 77 NBA players.)

VCU was likely the last team to make the newly expanded 68-team NCAA field. On Selection Sunday, ESPN’s Jay Bilas said of the then 23-11 Rams: “You talk about the eye test, this doesn’t make it through the laugh test.”

All VCU did to reach its first-ever Final Four here in Houston was win a play-in game against USC, then beat Georgetown (5 Final Fours, two titles), Purdue (2 Final Fours), Florida State (1 Final Four) and Kansas (13 Final Fours, three titles). If by some chance they overcome Butler and take down the UK/UConn winner to claim the championship, it would be a bigger upset than an amateur winning next week’s Masters golf tournament. At 170-1 odds before the tournament began, VCU is a bigger long shot than Mr. Ed would have been against Northern Dancer in the 1964 Kentucky Derby.

The next time members of your team are feeling down because they aren’t winning more on the court of business success,  remind them about the little schools that could from Indianapolis and Richmond. All your players may need is a reason to believe… even if they’re currently the last choice in some expert’s bracket.

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Lessons Learned – #2

The countdown of the Top 10 lessons I learned during 2010 is almost complete. Here’s #2:

Humility Dose– For a decade my beloved Texas Longhorns were a mainstay near the top of the college football rankings. This year, an ugly seven losses. Fallout? Offensive coordinator and special teams coaches fired; defensive coordinator resigned to become the head coach at Florida. Organizations occasionally face times like these. It will be interesting to see how Mack Brown handles his greatest leadership challenge.

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