Professor Elam

Tuesday Nov 2, 2010

Last week we noted UT Coach Mack Brown's temper tantrum at this team, to the point of saying

You stink!  We noted this is not the way to win friends and influence people. This fails the ethics test in at least three ways. 

First, it is simply rude and bad behavior. Darrell Royal never said his own team stunk. 

Second, worse, such behavior does not elicit the results that one desires. Mack Brown has certainly taken credit for the wins, and the buck certainly stops at the office door of the guy making the seven figure salary.

Third, the next opponent Baylor can read the newspapers as well. Iowa State was a perenial loser, or as Janis Joplin observed, freedom means nothing left to lose. Indeed this is the danger for perenial, we have more money than any other team in the South, so if you beat UT, you had a wining season no matter what you did in the other games. I note the same comment about the Baylor team I read about the Iowa State team, no one in the locker room thought we would lose. Baylor came from behind 19-10 at the start of the third quarter to win. 

The most important book you will read in college is Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Written in the 1930s it is still the gold standard on how to get people to do what you want them to do. Simply put

You will make more friends in two months taking an interest in other people

than you will in two years trying to get them interested in you. 

No kidding. Mack Brown put himself not the team at the center of his focus, he lost two games in a row, a disaster for someone in his position.