As far as life experiences go, the Duke Final Four win the other night was, without a doubt, one of my top five so far. It’s one thing to have been a student at Duke when the Men’s Basketball team won the first two NCAA titles. It was exciting in 2001 to watch that title game as a thrilled alum. Attending the NCAA Final Four tournament in person in Indianapolis this past weekend though, both semi-final games and then that I-don’t-have-the-words-to-describe-it final, was… is… a life experience.
(Inner monologue: Girl, get a grip! It was, in the grand scheme of things, just a basketball game. No one solved world hunger there.)
But, as I was walking away from Lucas Oil Stadium with the 70K+ other fans, I was contemplative, and even a little sad. During that walk, I couldn’t help but think about all the negative energy that had been directed at the Duke team leading up to this game – directed at the coach (some cartoonist at the Indianapolis Star thought it would be funny to draw Coach K as a devil, and the paper published it; his grand kids saw it) and directed at the team (a team of 18 – 22 year old KIDS). And perhaps directed at the institution itself. Even I felt some of it as a Duke alum/fan in the form of an email from a professional colleague who, though somewhat tongue in cheek, still typed “F- Duke” and sent it to more than one person. Disliking Duke is now a badge of honor, something that many do just because others do.
I can understand it at the college student level. After all, your university is tightly tied to your individual identity when you are that age. Rivalries are part of the school experience. But once we are several years beyond graduation and work with colleagues from many different universities, and we affiliate with them because we (gasp!) like them at least in spite of, but maybe more because of, what they learned at their colleges and universities and what they bring to our professional experiences and growth… then all I can do is ask this: what the hell? Are we so bereft of individual identity and personal pride as adults that we feel the need to direct a level of vitriol more suitable to a bar fight at a college basketball team? What on earth did that college basketball team ever do to us? What is that we are so angry at? REALLY.
Are we angry because we think/believe that Duke gets more breaks from the NCAA and the refs than other teams? Are we bitter because Duke has had multiple years of success in college basketball, and we are socially and culturally conditioned to believe that too much success for any single person/ team / institution is bad and therefore must be the result of a conspiracy?
Or is it because we only wish we could consistently be that successful? If only.
If only we could recruit solid employees like Duke recruits players. If only we could get our recruits to work their butts off consistently, to get back up on the horse after a bad day, to continue to work and challenge themselves, provide guidance and coaching and feedback to enable growth and ownership and pride? If only we could, one day, and hopefully more than one day, look back on what we – as professionals – have built in our workplaces, the work that we and our teams have done, and feel genuinely proud and pleased by what we’ve accomplished. If only our CEOs and CHROs and CFOs would look at us and say, finally, “You are a great team”?
While I am proud of the Duke Men’s College Basketball team (and Butler, too) for their accomplishments on the basketball court, the biggest take away from the Final Four was actually that I am grateful for it helping me see so clearly that as an adult and professional, hard work, humility, tough love, and lifting each other up to reach greater heights together is what I want to bring to work every day. And I know I may fall down in that effort once in a while, but I hope that my professional colleagues, bosses, and coaches will be around to help me get back up and keep shooting the ball. And maybe more importantly, I want to help as many other colleagues as possible in that endeavor. Even if they went to North Carolina. Or Butler. Or fill-in-the-blank-with-your-alma-mater.
Go Blue Devils.
