I’ve written a lot in the past about philanthropy, cause marketing and in general “giving back” and why it is good and necessary to do so especially in business. Sometimes, though, things don’t go as planned and the actions one thought would be “good” go south. Doing good goes bad, in some instances.
One example of this is something I read just yesterday on ESPN from the college football industry (I say “industry” because it is an industry and a business unto itself). No, it wasn’t an article about cheating or child molestation or any of the other salacious topics that have made headlines lately from the world of college sports. It was the announcement by the NCAA that they have issued minor sanctions (which in this case were letters of reprimand) to the University of Georgia and its head football coach, Mark Richt, as well as members of his staff.
You see, Coach Richt made the grave mistake of supplementing his staff’s pay out of his own pocket. That’s right, he paid his linebackers coach $10,000 after the university declined to give that coach a raise even after he turned down a job elsewhere. Coach Richt also did the unthinkable act of paying $6,000 to a member of his staff that got moved to an administrative position within the university which came with a salary cut. And Coach Richt, that monster, paid a total of $15,000 to ten non-coaching staff members including trainers, strength coaches and managers after they were denied bonuses by the university after making a bowl game. The list of travesties goes on. In total, it appears doing some basic math that Coach paid about $60K of his own money to members of his staff.
You see, all of these awful actions by Coach Richt broke NCAA rules on supplemental pay. Shame on him.
I hope by now you’re picking up on my sarcasm.
The NCAA has their own laundry list of serious issues and operational flaws, and has for some time. The fact that this story – which isn’t really a story, let’s be honest – makes news for the wrong reasons is ridiculous in the first place. What the NCAA doesn’t seem to get in this era of sex, lies and videotape (even right under it’s own nose) is that they could have made a public hero out of someone like Coach Richt and lauded him. Instead, they reprimanded him for taking money out of his paycheck and giving it to the very support people who help him do his job, and help him bring in the big paychecks as head coach. I’ll tell you: the world needs more people like this, especially the business world and the world of college athletics.
I sincerely hope Coach Richt received his letter of reprimand and threw it in the garbage. Good on him.
This does hint at a broader issue, though. We’ve all seen the negative headlines lately from college sports out of Penn State, Syracuse, Ohio State, USC and more. Those schools, or a few bad apples at those schools, clearly violated some rules (and moral standards) and have gotten, or are in the process of getting, punished. On the flip side, you have the case of the aforementioned Coach Richt who also received negative headlines for doing actual good and not harming anybody. Does anyone see the flaw in that?
In the traditional business world, I know more than a handful of executives who reward their team out of their own pockets. It actually happens more than we ever read about, I’m sure. What we do read about are all the “crooks” and excessive greed happening. We don’t read about managers or VP’s or CEO’s who reward their staffs out of their own money. I do it. Friends of mine do it. How many of you take your teams to a fancy lunch or dinner and don’t expense it? I bet a lot of you.
Yet, something would seem incredibly out of whack if there were negative repercussions from doing so. Reading stories like Coach Richt’s gives us some pause. Is our business or corporate culture set up in such a way that doing good goes bad more often than not? I don’t know the answer to that, but it is a scary proposition.
I do know that I would like to see a day when we read the above story through a positive lens. I would like to see more of a spotlight cast on people who actually are doing good, and making good decisions. Especially in this terrible economy, when people in leadership positions carry the exact proper intentions to their relationships and reward people close to them, this should be celebrated much more than it is.
So I hope this story is not a cautionary tale. I hope, instead, more people throw caution to the wind when it comes to doing good.
I believe the folks charged with governance in the world are sometimes over zealous in their pursuit of ‘what’s right’. Yet many wonderful acts of compassion go totally unnoticed, unmentioned and under reported. Of course, many times the giver prefers it that way because he/she gave anonymously and intended it to be a quiet token of heartfelt charity.
Yet in Mark Richt’s case, perhaps this could bubble up to a point where the folly in the ruling and, yes, the rules themselves come under fire, just like the NCAA’s rules disallowing scholarship students from starting their own business, or working a part time job. Hello. My scholarship was the GI Bill. My work supported my growing family. It’s simply none of their business as long as it is clean legitimate, honest work.
Merry Christmas. Now where are the Political Correctness Police? Fugetabboutit…take a hike..
Thanks for shining the light on the compassionate givers Mike!