Forty Minutes of Chaos
What a single basketball game taught a university president about building institutions that last.
On the evening of March 15, 1975, Jack Ridley sat in the upper deck of a half-empty arena watching a team he did not yet lead play the game of their lives. He had been named university president three weeks earlier, a political appointment that surprised everyone including himself. Down on the hardwood, four players he could not yet name by sight were executing a press break so precise it looked choreographed. The final buzzer came and went. Ridley turned to his wife and said, "I think I have made a terrible mistake."
The Wooden Standard
“Coaching is teaching. And teaching, at its best, is the refusal to let anyone in the room be invisible.”
— Jack Ridley, Founding Address, 1975