Athletic Director Quotes

If you’re not certain of the value of mentorship, think of how many elite athletes or professional sports teams train without a coach. Zero. How many of your favorite films are made without a producer or director? Zero. How many of the best schools in the world function without teachers? Zero. It’s safe to say that every great leader, in any field, first had a great mentor. Finding a mentor who inspires and guides your growth is a life-changing experience. Mentors help us to transcend the limits, or perceived limits, of our abilities. A mentor can be anyone who teaches us and helps us to grow in ways we couldn’t have on our own.

They throw cash at programs and expect results. And if they don’t get them, the money stops. There’s a real question as to who is actually running these programs: the school’s athletic director or the wealthy few writing the checks. All you need to do is google “T. Boone Pickens” and “Oklahoma State University” to get the general idea.

Children and adults alike need to experience how rewarding it is to work at the edge of their abilities. Resilience is the product of agency: knowing that what you do can make a difference. Many of us remember what playing team sports, singing in the school choir, or playing in the marching band meant to us, especially if we had coaches or directors who believed in us, pushed us to excel, and taught us we could be better than we thought was possible. The children we reach need this experience. Athletics, playing music, dancing, and theatrical performances all promote agency and community.

Navy Seals Stress Relief Tactics (As printed in O Online Magazine, Sept. 8, 2014) Prep for Battle: Instead of wasting energy by catastrophizing about stressful situations, SEALs spend hours in mental dress rehearsals before springing into action, says Lu Lastra, director of mentorship for Naval Special Warfare and a former SEAL command master chief.  He calls it mental loading and says you can practice it, too.  When your boss calls you into her office, take a few minutes first to run through a handful of likely scenarios and envision yourself navigating each one in the best possible way.  The extra prep can ease anxiety and give you the confidence to react calmly to whatever situation arises. Talk Yourself Up: Positive self-talk is quite possibly the most important skill these warriors learn during their 15-month training, says Lastra.  The most successful SEALs may not have the biggest biceps or the fastest mile, but they know how to turn their negative thoughts around.  Lastra recommends coming up with your own mantra to remind yourself that you’ve got the grit and talent to persevere during tough times. Embrace the Suck: “When the weather is foul and nothing is going right, that’s when I think, now we’re getting someplace!” says Lastra, who encourages recruits to power through the times when they’re freezing, exhausted or discouraged.  Why?  Lastra says, “The, suckiest moments are when most people give up; the resilient ones spot a golden opportunity to surpass their competitors.  It’s one thing to be an excellent athlete when the conditions are perfect,” he says.  “But when the circumstances aren’t so favorable, those who have stronger wills are more likely to rise to victory.” Take a Deep Breath: “Meditation and deep breathing help slow the cognitive process and open us up to our more intuitive thoughts,” says retired SEAL commander Mark Divine, who developed SEALFit, a demanding training program for civilians that incorporates yoga, mindfulness and breathing techniques.  He says some of his fellow SEALs became so tuned-in, they were able to sense the presence of nearby roadside bombs.  Who doesn’t want that kind of Jedi mind power?  A good place to start: Practice what the SEALs call 4 x 4 x 4 breathing.  Inhale deeply for four counts, then exhale for four counts and repeat the cycle for four minutes several times a day.  You’re guaranteed to feel calmer on any battleground. Learn to value yourself, which means to fight for your happiness. ---Ayn Rand

Goss, his wrestling coach, and other experts came up with sensible reforms to end the long-standing practice of extreme weight cutting, then told the Big Ten and the NCAA that Michigan would only wrestle under those rules, and would only wrestle against other teams that abided by them, too. Such a stand might have gotten another program blackballed from the wrestling community. But when it came from the Michigan athletic director, it proved to be the lever needed to reform the sport at every level, with the Big Ten adopting Michigan’s reforms, followed by the NCAA, and the high schools—a sequence of events that Yost, Crisler, or Canham would have readily recognized as Michigan’s influence at its best. Those rules are still in effect today.

When Karel Gott, the Czech pop singer, went abroad in 1972, Husak got scared. He sat right down and wrote him a personal letter (it was August 1972 and Gott was in Frankfurt). The following is a verbatim quote from it. I have invented nothing. Dear Karel, We are not angry with you. Please come back. We will do everything you ask. We will help you if you help us … Think it over. Without batting an eyelid Husak let doctors, scholars, astronomers, athletes, directors, cameramen, workers, engineers, architects, historians, journalists, writers, and painters go into emigration, but he could not stand the thought of Karel Gott leaving the country. Because Karel Gott represents music minus memory, the music in which the bones of Beethoven and Ellington, the dust of Palestrina and Schonberg, lie buried. The president of forgetting and the idiot of music deserve one another. They are working for the same cause. “We will help you if you help us.” You can’t have one without the other.

Ask yourself the following questions to find profitable niches. 1. Which social, industry, and professional groups do you belong to, have you belonged to, or do you understand, whether dentists, engineers, rock climbers, recreational cyclists, car restoration aficionados, dancers, or other? Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with. Look at products and books you own, include online and offline subscriptions, and ask yourself, “What groups of people purchase the same?” Which magazines, websites, and newsletters do you read on a regular basis? 2. Which of the groups you identified have their own magazines? Visit a large bookstore such as Barnes & Noble and browse the magazine rack for smaller specialty magazines to brainstorm additional niches. There are literally thousands of occupation- and interest/hobby-specific magazines to choose from. Use Writer’s Market to identify magazine options outside the bookstores. Narrow the groups from question 1 above to those that are reachable through one or two small magazines. It’s not important that these groups all have a lot of money (e.g., golfers)—only that they spend money (amateur athletes, bass fishermen, etc.) on products of some type. Call these magazines, speak to the advertising directors, and tell them that you are considering advertising; ask them to e-mail their current advertising rate card and include both readership numbers and magazine back-issue samples. Search the back issues for repeat advertisers who sell direct-to-consumer via 800 numbers or websites—the more repeat advertisers, and the more frequent their ads, the more profitable a magazine is for them … and will be for us.

as they marched out on their way to band practice to get fitted for new hats to hide foam rollers in, as the athletic director was very against the band members having smooth fascia and demanded they have sore muscles while the football team played.

To initiate its EIR program, USCIS would also turn to an agitator. Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and prolific blogger, had become exasperated when officers of two promising startups under his watch were forced to return to their home countries because they couldn’t secure visas. He shared their story on a blog, attracting the attention of other entrepreneurs, including Ries, who couldn’t understand why there was no visa category for an entrepreneur with American investors and employees. In lieu of that category, many entrepreneurs were at the mercy of visa examiners who didn’t understand how they operated. At the point of visa application, many startups had not hired many employees or generated much revenue. This confused traditional visa examiners, who would then ask odd and irrelevant questions, often before a denial. To give just one example, it’s been years since AOL required a compact disc to use its service. And yet, visa examiners were demanding proof of a warehouse, where software startups would store their CD inventory for shipping to customers. As Feld’s idea of a “startup visa” became intertwined with, and paralyzed by, the broader debate on comprehensive immigration reform, the USCIS, with White House support, sought to accomplish something administratively within the existing law. It instituted an EIR program, to organize and educate a specialty unit of immigration officers to handle entrepreneur and startup nonimmigrant visa cases.22 The project also called for educating entrepreneurs about the available options, one of which they may have overlooked. For instance, the O-1 visa, which was reserved “for those with extraordinary ability,” had proven a successful channel for actors, athletes, musicians, directors, scientists, artists, businessmen, engineers, and others who could provide ample evidence of their unique and impressive abilities, attributes, awards, and accolades. It had even created some controversy, when visa evaluators took the term “model” to an extreme, awarding a visa to one of Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriends, a Playboy centerfold from Canada named Shera Berchard.23 If she was confident enough to assert and explain her “extraordinary ability,” why weren’t entrepreneurs?

Eventually, when I decided to leave coaching and compete again, we got married and moved to the small town of Hills, Iowa, which is south of Iowa City. Before we knew it, Lyn was pregnant with Jake, and our family was growing. I was growing too, now responsible for three lives beside my own. I was waiting on tables a couple of days a week and earning a small stipend from the Hawkeye wrestling club. We had a small house out in the country, and we were happy, but finances were tight. Like most couples starting out, we had to work together and stay together. As a waiter, I wasn’t bringing in a lot of money, and the Hawkeye club couldn’t pay much other than assist with training expenses. We started our family, had no health insurance, and struggled to make ends meet. Things weren’t working so well. I remember my conversation with Coach Gable. His honesty gave me some great clarity. Wanting big things for our lives simply isn’t enough. We need a deep obsession to act on what we desire. It’s chosen suffering and self-learning through the deepest desire to prevail. Toward the end of my first-year wrestling for the Hawkeye wrestling club, a job at Hofstra opened up. The Athletic Director called me for a meeting about their program. A few Hofstra alumni called as well. A good friend, Guy Truicko, wanted to help me get the position.

I didn’t have a daddy to play squash with the director of sales’ pops. No recruiter to lay up five interviews for me to bomb until someone took a chance on me because I was an athlete. The only thing that got me there was a momentary flash of courage—courage that was growing weaker by the day.

Fred Turner knows, of course, that he is a handsome, athletic-looking young man, the type that directors employ to battle carnivorous vegetables.

I want to say this about the textbook situation. Our associate athletic director for compliance at the time, Chris King, did a superb job of sifting through a maze of paperwork, finding out exactly what the problem had been and setting the course to correct it. The gist of the issue was a worker in the bookstore who was friendly with the athletes, was giving the athletes textbooks, which was an extra benefit. The players did repay the full amount of the costs of the books and had their eligibility restored after sitting out four games. Despite the

Athletes and musicians often refer to being in “the zone”—that mystical place where their inner critic is silenced and they completely inhabit the moment, where the thinking is clear and the motions are precise. Often, mental models help get them there. Just as George Lucas liked to imagine his company as a wagon train headed west—its passengers full of purpose, part of a team, unwavering in their pursuit of their destination—the coping mechanisms used by Pixar and Disney Animation’s directors, producers, and writers draw heavily on visualization. By imagining their problems as familiar pictures, they are able to keep their wits about them when the pressures of not knowing shake their confidence.

Galen Rupp matriculated as a freshman at the University of Oregon in 2004 and was performing well. There was only one problem—Salazar didn’t have any faith that the head track-and-field coach was the right collegiate mentor for his young protégé. So Salazar and Cook helped orchestrate the firing of coach Martin Smith, a quirky leader who many of the Nike loyalists didn’t think was the right fit for Rupp. In this effort they came to loggerheads with Bill Moos, the university’s athletic director. Knight and Nike had had a long and mutually prosperous twelve-year run with Moos in which the school’s athletic budget grew from $18.5 million to $41 million. But he didn’t want to fire his head coach, who was objectively good at his job. Knight threatened to withhold funding for the construction of the school’s new basketball arena until both coach and director were gone. Less than a week after he led the team to a sixth-place finish at the NCAA indoor championships, Smith was replaced by former Stanford coach Vin Lananna, a devout “Nike guy.” Moos would retire a year later, saying, “I created the monster that ate me.” Knight then made a donation of $100 million—the largest donation in Oregon history—to the university.

One incident from Yasuko’s days in the village elementary school was indelibly etched in her memory. She was the head of her class for two or three years in a row, including the time when it happened. Just before graduation the principal asked the pupils how many would go on to attend middle school. Of the twenty pupils from Sunada and Tsukigata only three were able to do so. Those three raised their hands. The other pupils—children of poor tenant farmers, small-time candy store owners, and barkeepers—turned around to look at them, their faces vivid with envy. With everyone’s eyes focused on them the three blushed a little but, as might be expected, they looked proud. Not only was each of the three inferior to Yasuko in grades, they—except for the assistant class leader—were from the bottom half of the class. At that moment Yasuko was assailed by a strange and incomprehensible feeling. She felt she could not bear to explain it away convincingly even within her own heart. Pupils who were much, much worse than she were going on to a higher school! She understood of course that it was because their families had “money,” but understanding alone was not enough to make Yasuko accept it. Similar things had happened a number of times. For instance, when a Hokkaido government director came to inspect their school it was really Yasuko who as head of the class should have delivered the congratulatory address. However, since she did not even have a different kimono to change into, a rich child took her place. The lack of clothes and money also led to her being absent from athletic meets and excursions. But at such times Yasuko, unlike Okei, assumed a scornful expression. She smiled faintly while listening to the rich child read the congratulatory address; and said that only those with nothing better to do wanted to take part in excursions and athletic meets. Unlike Yasuko, Okei often cried at such times, saying it was a terribly cruel and unfair way to treat fellow schoolmates.

Jason Gesser is one of the leading players who has always benefitted the team. In addition to this, Jason delves into the efforts in his role with the Cougar Athletic Fund to reconnect with the past student-athletes to the WSU and shares about his thoughts on earning his executive MBA degree from the WSU Carson College of Business.

Jason Gesser was earlier the interim head coach, offensive coordinator, recruiting coordinator for the Idaho Vandals of the Washington State University. He played for Washington State University under head coach Mike Price. Jason Gesser played for the Utah Blaze of the Arena Football League, Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian football league and more. By the time, he was originally hired at Idaho as running backs coach in June 2011.

Jason Gesser is an American college football former coach born in 31 May, 1979. He is a former player, former assistant Athletic director for major gifts at WSU. He played for Washington State University under head coach Mike Price. In February 2019 Jason Gesser was hired as the quarterbacks' coach at Wyoming under fourth-year head coach Dave Christensen.

After one particularly rough journey where my race skis went MIA, I was tired, hangry, and on the verge of a meltdown. Our team director took me aside for some words of advice. Look, he said. These hassles are just part of the job. You want to be a ski racer? Then learn to deal with it. You can waste all your energy getting pissed at the airline, or you can accept that this stuff is going to happen and save your emotional energy for the race. He was right. I couldn’t change what was happening, but I could change the way I responded. That shift in attitude instantly reduced my stress levels.

Jason Gesser has a historic and successful football programs and has enriched his college career by the leading, Cougars to two 10 win seasons that included a trip to the Rose Bowl. Jason Gesser also had a victory in the Sun Bowl. He is basically a perfect fit for the people. And the best part is that Jason Gesser considers WSU, a perfect fit for himself. Now he has a new role as an assistant director of the development team with the Cougar Athletic Fund.

Jason Gesser took over as the starting quarterback at Washington State, and with him the Cougars found success. In 2001 and 2002 Jason Gesser led the Cougars to back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time in program history, culminating in a trip to the 2003 Rose Bowl.

Jason always wanted to the director and since he had the athletic background, the coaching background, the willingness to learn, Jason Gesser thought of growing his business and this helped him a lot towards his business. His programs has been the top most in the country and many people have benefited because of them.

There were many people who left a mark at Incarnation, but I’ll pick out just one, a counselor and unit director named Wes Wubbenhorst. He was a big, athletic, goofy man-child. His conversation was all overflowing enthusiasm, interspersed with whistles, pops, weird exclamations, sudden laughter, and good cheer. He was always interrupting himself mid-sentence as another thing that delighted him sprang into consciousness. He lived to be over sixty and walked through the darkest parts of the world, but I don’t think he ever learned to talk in that serious way adults do. Some piece of him always remained a Holy Child. I’ve come to recognize people who were formed by a camp, and they often had what Wes had: bubbling enthusiasm, a radiance, a wardrobe mostly of old sneakers, tattered shorts, and ripped T-shirts. Wes later became an Episcopal priest. He ministered to the poor in Honduras, comforted victims of domestic violence. His God was a God of love, and his life at camp was training for his mission of selfless love. He was, as the saying goes, a man for others: enthusiastically waking you up in the morning and singing you to bed each night, the best passer on the basketball court I’ve ever encountered. When someone did something extraordinarily stupid, he would just smile and sigh in wonder at the wackiness of life.