I am afraid that we all look at leadership in athletic teams from the perspective of leading toward a goal of winning. There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, that is the case almost always and what our experience would lead us to believe. But what if the goal were something other than winning games? Let's just say for argument's sake that the goal was for the team to have a composite grade point average of, let's say 3.7. Let us also say that the reward for achieving was playing time on the hardwood. Let us say that professors were asked to provide bi-weekly up dates on each player's progress in the classroom. Just for argument's sake, let us say that Edwards as a graduate student is leading the players with a 4.0 gpa and so he plays the minutes he is able to play with some time lost due to needing to catch his breath and with fouls troubles thrown in. His number of minutes would be what shows other players his leadership. He leads by example in that case. Even attitude towards refs would be somewhat overlooked due to his dedication in the academic performance he demonstrates in the classroom. With that in mind, let's say that Vila is consistently kicking ass in his grades all semester so he gets the start and plays the most minutes as a reward. Leading by leading in the gpa competition. However last week, he was out performed by Verhoeven, and so for the WKU game, Verhoeven got the playing time, and because of it was able to show more of his basketball game. Looking at the team the way we are used to, Vila's basketball game leaves us scratching our heads as to why he plays and starts as he does. We wonder who is leading the team. But what if in the team's eyes he is a great leader in the classroom, and challenged Verhoeven and Odigiie to beat him each week. What if he not only challenges them, but helps them to pass tests, get work done with high quality, even if it means losing his starting position when Verhoeven gets a great report from all of his classes, even the one that has been holding him back, AND it was because of Vila's help and encouragement that provided the boost. The team would see the incredible leadership and sacrifice Vila had shown. The unsung hero gives his minutes to get another players success. It may be crazy to think this way, but we spend all season wondering what the Hell and can't make a lick of sense out of Terry's thinking. But maybe we just have been using our traditional measurements when they aren't the measurements being used. If I wrote posts with the first four letters in each word being random letters and then a real letter followed by four random letters, and then three, using Kyyote as an example, it might look like this; atpqkdwzyxbyvoplkmtjnvtule and it wouldn't make any sense to anyone reading it. But if we in the Den understood the real way we do things all of a sudden all of us can understand it quite easily and if makes perfect sense. We could even spot misspellings which would really complicate the understanding for outsiders. Imagine the posts and crazy thinking they could express trying to read what we see easily. It is my usual long winded way of saying instead of wondering about what seems to not make sense, perhaps it is simply because we are using the wrong code. And using the wrong code will lead to seeing insanity where perfect sense is right before our eyes. I do not know if it is grades or academic performance, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was. But I am almost sure that there is a different logic or code being used by Terry than we normal folks judge basketball by.
