Page 240 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
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We do not control the unwelcome twists and turns that are part
of our leadership. At those difficult moments I have drawn strength
from Dad’s strong example as well as his suggestion to worry only
about those things over which I have control. We can’t control fate,
only our response to it.

PLAY THE HAND YOU ARE DEALT
Fate played the cruelest trick on me—not for the first or last
time—soon after I moved into the college ranks as a coach in 1946
at Indiana State Teachers College. During my second season, the
phone started to ring with coaching offers from schools such as
UCLA and the University of Minnesota.
At the time, UCLA was just four letters in the alphabet that
meant almost nothing to me. Minnesota was another story entirely
because it was in the Big 10 conference.
In addition to having allegiance to the Big 10 because I’d played
basketball at Purdue, there was a more practical reason involved: I
knew—and was known by—so many high school coaches around
the territory. All of them—several hundred—would be potential
recruiters for my program. It’s hard to overstate how important this
could be in developing and maintaining a superior basketball pro-
gram. It was an asset of almost indescribable value to a coach. I
wanted that asset very much.
There was also the issue of my family. Nell and the children didn’t
want to move far from Indiana and, in truth, neither did I. We loved
everything about the Midwest, including the winter weather. For
many reasons I had the greatest desire to become head coach of the
Minnesota Gophers basketball team in the Twin Cities.
I visited UCLA only as a favor to a former teammate of mine at
Purdue, Dutch Fehring, football line coach of the Bruins. He and
a local broadcaster, Bob Kelly, had recommended me to the selec-