Sports Dudes Should Read Good to Great by Jim Collins

November 27, 2022

Read Time: 10 minutes

I don’t like “rings culture.”  I don’t like “tanking.”  “Sabermetrics” is cool.  For those who don’t know, these are words that people who love sports have been using more and more over the last decade or so.

Rings culture goes something like this:

One guy on television says, “Hey, you don’t have any rings, your opinion doesn’t matter at all…You don’t have any rings, why do bother to open your mouth?”

On television, this kind of talk is important because we viewers love it.  I watch people have these conversations and I laugh and I chuckle.  Then, I watch them again on the internet because of how hard I laugh and chuckle.

In rings culture, one “ring” is one championship. 

In American team sports, when a player from a championship team wins the championship, they are given a ring.  Like a ring for their finger.  The ring belongs to them forever. 

The rings are beautiful to look at.  They’re worth thousands, even millions of dollars.  They’ve evolved over the years.  Rings used to look like a high school class ring.  Now, it’s debatable whether a king could afford a single athletic championship ring.

Tanking goes like this in American team sports.  For the new up and coming rookies, we have drafts.  Here’s how the drafts are set up: the worst team has the best chance of picking the best up and coming rookie.  We like to reward the losers.  It helps keeps things competitive.  This has led the popularization of “tanking.”  Tanking is when a team strategically loses games in order to have the best chance at selecting a top rookie.

Then there is “sabermetrics,” this is the easiest to explain.  Teams will employ smart people who will crunch numbers to enhance their team’s odds of winning.  This is called many things, like VORP or RAPTOR or WAR, but I’ll stick with sabermetrics.

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Rings culture, tanking, and sabermetrics have eaten away at what American team sports is at its core…it’s all about the team.  It’s not about the rings.  It’s not about deciding to stink for two years to get good young players in the draft.  It’s not about crunching numbers.  It’s about the team. 

Yes, there are some great players, coaches, managers, and owners who are able to cut through the rings-tanking-sabermetrical lies and see American team sports for its true self…but the rest of us struggle to see. 

Yes, we do have these great figures today who help us see…Bill Belichick is a good name.  Pat Riley is another good name.  Riley helped create “Heat Culture.”  Belichick has won multiple Super Bowls over multiple decades.  Riley has won multiple championships over multiple decades too.  These are the people who can see the through the rings and the tanks and the sabers and see the team.  And they see the struggle to maintain the team.

So where do we start?  How do fellas like Belichick and Riley talk to the rest of us?  How do they help us focus on the team?  Luckily, for Bill and Pat’s time and for our pocketbooks, we don’t need them.  I have a book for us all to share.  It doesn’t even need to be read cover-to-cover…anyone can understand the thesis of the book through a quick google.  I recommend reading Good to Great by Jim Collins. 

I read Good to Great in my high school business class.  In this book, Collins attempts to answer the question, how do businesses go from being “good” to being “great?” 

I looked it up using the ctrl-F function for my e-book.  “Rings culture,” “tanking,” and “sabermetrics” are mentioned zero times in the book, Good to Great.

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One of the great concepts out of Jim Collins’ Good to Great is the 5 levels of leadership.  They go in this order:

1. Highly Capable Individual

2. Contributing Team Member

3. Competent Manager

4. Effective Leader

5. Level 5 Executive

It is not exactly calculus.  But this is good stuff.  This will help us understand our trouble with rings culture, tanking, and sabermetrics.  Going into detail about each of the levels seems like a fool’s errand.  In my opinion, the titles of the levels explain themselves.

This is paraphrasing, but Jim Collins describes Level 5 Executives as “modest, yet willful.”  Level 5 Executives are also “humble, yet fearless” and all that good stuff.  Collins is an unwasteful and engaging writer.  Collins writes on Abraham Lincoln.  Collins writes that Lincoln decided to, “never let his ego get in the way of his primary ambition for the larger cause of an enduring great nation.” 

When it comes to Good to Great and sports, there’s two things I can think of that Jim Collins could write about that are not Bill Belichick nor Pat Riley.  In sports today, it’s Tennessee football in 2022 and Kobe Bryant. 

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Tennessee football in 2022…Tennessee football had one of the great nights of all time in 2022.  They beat Alabama.  Everyone in America hates Alabama football.  Everyone, outside of Alabama, was fired up to see Alabama lose.  And Tennessee beat them, not by being lucky…but by being good.  Tennessee took the field on October 15 and defeated Alabama.  No footballs bounced incorrectly.  The referees did not make any crazy mistakes.  Tennessee won that football game.  100,000 people rushed the field and all the Tennessee fans had the same thought:

“We are a good football team.” 

I cannot tell you, how great that feeling is…when you’re a fan and you suddenly realize just how good your favorite team is.  It feels like anything is possible.  It’s one of the most thrilling feelings in all of sports.

Even though Tennessee did not win the SEC East and lost a few games, they had a good year.  Sometimes, as a fan, that’s all you can ask for. 

***

Now, how did Kobe Bryant go from being good to great? 

No, Kobe was not always great.  That’s a terrible thing to say about Kobe’s work ethic.  He averaged less than 10 points per game as a rookie, far from being great.  He won three “rings” and a lot of people said, “He had Shaq!!!  Kobe is a bum!!!”  He had three rings and people did not believe he was great. 

Kobe went through it all.  He got into trouble with teammates, coaches, the law, and the respect of his name has been debated, even after his death.  He was charged with sexual assault, once upon a time.  It was a terrible-terrible time for the people involved.  Kobe’s wife and family, I’m sure, were hurt too.  And yes, these things matter to his greatness.

When faced with adversity, did Kobe grab a rock and hide under it forever?  No, he came back, he brought honor to his name, his life, his family, and he won championships.  Millions have showed their support for Kobe over the last couple of years. 

I watched a video of Kobe Bryant’s tribute video by Dr. Dre after Kobe tragically died.  That video pumps me up.  It makes me cry too.  That’s the story of Kobe Bryant. 

But the video also makes us forget about Shaquille O’Neal, Phil Jackson, Jerry Buss, Robert Horry, Samaki Walker, Smush Parker, Pau Gasol…and all the greatest-greats and all the stinky-stinks that Kobe was involved with throughout his career.  Yes, in my opinion, Kobe absolutely has deserved all the love and respect he’s gotten since his tragic death. 

But Kobe knew about good to great…he understood Level 5 Executive leadership.  Kobe made a Facebook post in 2012 telling us he knew.  He told us what he had learned over his career.  The Facebook post is about leadership.  It’s about leadership and its importance to the team.  The post is only 219 words, I recommend everyone should read Kobe’s words, rest his soul.

***

“Rings culture,” “tanking,” “sabermetrics,” these are all connected.  They’re all things that have only really become established in 21st Century American team sports.  In the 20th Century, sports were different.  The money was smaller.  You could not see every single highlight of every single game.  I remember those times, when all I looked forward to was the Detroit Red Wings and DEEEEEEEEEETROIT BASKETBALLLLLLLLLLLL.  It’s all I had when I was five years old.  The times have changed.

How do professional American sports teams become great?  They win a ring, correct?  Nope.  There are plenty upon hundreds of great teams in the years of the past who did not win any rings.  There are plenty of great athletes who deserved to win rings multiple times over…but they did not succeed.  Some of these teams had Bill Belichick, Pat Riley, or Kobe Bryant.  And all of them failed to earn a ring.

Rings culture calls it a shame. 

Tanking would suggest to trade Kobe and that Riley and Belichick start losing. 

Sabermetrics would hire someone with a mathematics degree from Harvard. 

I’m pretty sure this is just what happens in American team sports.  One side will win and one side will lose.  It’s about the exhilaration of winning…and the suffocating pain of losing.  We cannot have one without the other. 

So, what about the rings culture, the tanking, and the sabermetrics?  Look, all of these are perfectly fine and dandy.  We can talk about them and debate them all we want.  But remember what the Level 5 leaders of sports are thinking while we all talk about all this nonsense.  Belichick, Riley, and Kobe…they’re just trying to make their teams as great as possible.

Time for a joke:

Why are leopards bad at hide and seek?

Because they're always spotted.