Culture
Football and Forensics (Part 125): Culture
#footballandforensics Friday is here, and it’s time to discuss how culture breeds success … or failure.
In football, I experienced the benefits of a durable winning culture and a weak losing culture as I went from high school to college football.
In high school, our football team had always been a power – regardless of the gradual changes in coaching personnel and obviously players, a winning culture endured. The expectations were that we would win all or most of our games and compete for league championships and state playoffs. The stands were always full with many thousands. The community was supportive. And legacies were past down from generation to generation.
In college, I played football at a basketball school. There was little winning, and the culture reflected a lack of confidence and a “here we go again” attitude when something didn’t go our way.
1984: North Canton Hoover vs. Perry: We were playing one of our tough high school league rivals and fell behind immediately 16-0. Got punched in the mouth right off the bat. I looked around at my teammates faces and their eyes. No panic. No worry. Absolute confidence and certainty that we would still win. We did, 20-16.
1985: Davidson vs. Western Carolina: My 1st game as a college football player. I wondered when the fans would arrive in the stands. They never really did. We held our own with a more talented team that featured future NFL Pro Bowler Clyde Simmons before losing 13-0. I was furious about the loss. There weren’t many others who were. Many guys joking around and chalking it up as a moral victory.
Culture also matters in the world of law enforcement and criminal prosecutions. I’ve always been blessed to have worked with great prosecutors with high levels of integrity as well as some of the best law enforcement agents in the world during my career.
In my prosecution offices in both the Army and as an AUSA, I worked with highly skilled prosecutors in an office with a winning culture. The Army trial counsels worked out together, ran together, played basketball together, and helped each other in the office.
The USAO did annual district-wide retreats. Everyone in the district knew each other and knew they could call one another for advice and help. It was a very collaborative atmosphere. A winning culture.
The relationship between our office and the law enforcement community was special. Agents bent over backwards to help AUSAs prosecute cases effectively. As one small example, 2 ATF agents drove 12 hours each way to Washington and back in a single day and night to retrieve evidence that wasn’t sent back from the lab so I could have it for trial that started the next day. They didn’t sleep. Didn’t take a break. Drove straight there and back.
Winning culture.
In the current world of college sports, I think the tendency with the transfer portal combined now with NIL and rev sharing is that many universities have a wandering eye — who else is “out there” and available who can make our dreams come true?
Instead, I believe it will be important to create an internal culture that motivates the guys they have recruited in the first place to stay.
That culture includes robust player development efforts that address the whole person of the athlete rather than just treating them all as commodities. Behavior often reflects treatment.
PD should focus on leadership, professionalism, and development of the whole person on and off the field. It involves finding opportunities for them to grow academically and personally as well as on the field such that they become reluctant to leave. We can help with PD efforts.
Sadly, in the world of short sightedness and unintended consequences, many schools are cutting back on their PD programming and staff. That is an enormous mistake. Instead, they should be doubling down and making their PD departments even more robust.
That will contribute to retention and be a selling point to new recruits and those seeking a different home from the outside.
