Sport for Business
Sport for Business
How a life in college sports shaped Kevin White's perspective on leadership and legacy.
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Kevin White's remarkable journey from accidental high school coach to the upper echelons of American collegiate athletic administration unfolds with warmth and wisdom in this captivating conversation. Recorded at Fire Restaurant in Dublin, White reflects on how family circumstances unexpectedly launched him and his wife Jane into coaching careers that would ultimately lead to leadership roles at some of America's most prestigious universities.
What began as a temporary teaching position while caring for his terminally ill father blossomed into a nine-year coaching career followed by 38 years as an athletics director across institutions like Notre Dame, Arizona State, and Duke. Throughout this conversation, White reveals how his recently published autobiography "The Good Sport" has reconnected him with athletes from across five decades, reinforcing the profound impact sports leadership can have on young people's development.
The discussion explores fascinating contrasts between American college sports and European models, with White sharing insights from his time consulting with Maynooth University in the early 1990s when they considered implementing American-style athletics programs. His perspective on the economic impact of collegiate sports—contributing to what he estimates as a trillion-dollar domestic sports economy—highlights just how embedded these programs are in American cultural identity.
Perhaps most compelling is White's candid assessment of the current challenges facing collegiate athletics, particularly regarding Name, Image and Likeness compensation. His concern that the system is being built "while the plane is in the air" reflects the unprecedented territory college sports now occupies, shifting rapidly from strict amateurism to what he describes as essentially a "play-for-pay" model without proper guardrails.
Whether you're fascinated by sports management, leadership development, or the economic forces shaping athletics globally, White's distillation of leadership into four fundamental characteristics—empathy, task orientation, adaptability, and passion—offers invaluable wisdom for anyone in a position of influence. His story serves as both inspiration and cautionary tale for the future of sports administration.
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Hello and welcome to the Sport for Business podcast. I'm your host, rob Hartnett, and today, in the lovely surroundings of Fire Restaurant on Dawson Street, I'm delighted to be joined by Kevin White, who has lived a life and had a career at the very highest level of college sport and is the author of a recently published biography, the Good Sport. Kevin, you're very welcome to the Sport for Business podcast.
Kevin White:Oh, rob, it's great to be with you. It's an absolute honor. Thank you, and it's great to be at Fire. I love this place. Yeah, it's great to be with you. It's an absolute honor. Thank you, and it's great to be at FIRE. I love this place.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, it's great, isn't it? It is of roles that you've had at the very highest level within college sports and within those leadership roles in the United States. It's impossible to summarize your career, but let's try and start at the beginning. What was it that inspired you to see a role for yourself in sport other than as a player?
Kevin White:Well, Rob, it's perhaps not unlike we talked off air just a few minutes ago. But we had never. My wife and I had never really imagined a career in sport. That's not entirely true. She was a physical education major and she wanted to be a teacher and a coach and I thought I would find my way into corporate America somewhere and I was more built and wired that way.
Kevin White:In any event, in 1972, I guess it was 73, my father was terminally ill and relocated from Amityville, Long Island, New York, to Port Richey, Florida, and he was terminal and we got one of those late night calls you got to come down here, I'm near the end and he lived for four years and we couldn't find any other employment opportunities as we kind of dealt with that circumstance family circumstance, and I'm the oldest of four but coaching and teaching and so Jane taught and coached almost everything at the high school it was Gulf High School in Newport Ritchie and I coached football, wrestling and track and loved it, and we had great success, far better than we deserved.
Kevin White:We inherited great kids and we were in it three or four years and we started getting overtures from universities to coach at the next level and we just followed the rainbow and before you know it we were at Central Michigan University as a coaching duet and I was coaching on the men's side, Jane was the women's coach, and from there to Southeast Missouri State in 1982, as my son, Mike White, who's the best world coach in Georgia, often says, Dad, why'd you go on the dark side? You left coaching and you went to athletic administration and I went in 82 and I really had serious buyer's remorse and almost came back to coaching a couple of times but wisely stayed and had great experiences every place we've been and it's now so. We coached for nine years and then we were an AD for 38, and then I'm an AD for 38, and then I'm full-time on the Fuqua School of Business faculty now for four. So it's been a great run for a kid from Amityville.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, getting into it in the first instance. Teaching at secondary school. There's a sense there that when the kids are coming into sport and physical activity at that age they are far from being a fully formed thing. They've got wide eyes and high ambition and they want to laugh, they want to have fun. By the time you get to college that has become a little bit more intense. It's become a little bit more defined the best are playing against the best and the rest are playing against the rest, hopefully for a long time to come. But did you miss that in the first instance? Let's call it the delight of just the sheer joy of kicking a ball and seeing that in kids.
Kevin White:Well, you know it's been interesting. This book has been a wonderful conduit to take me backwards, you know, and I hadn't anticipated that that would be the case. I've now reconnected to a lot of high school kids I've coached, and college kids, and I kind of rediscovered my joy, or the joy of being around those people, even now that they're in their 60s, you know, and I'm in my 70s just so much fun. But I loved every second of coaching and had two unique opportunities. One I was offered the head coaching job for East Malaysia in the late 70s.
Kevin White:I was in my late 20s and it was at that point that my in-laws basically said that's enough, I mean, and they lost their sense of humor on that. One no English speaking schools, kids were going to have to, you know, piper Pilot or Piper Plane, whatever it is to an American school. And then, a year or two after that, I took an interview to be the head coach of New Zealand track and field and that's a long way from that Gulf High School and they interviewed five of us. Peter Snell was the chair of the committee and interviewed five of us and only three got the in-person interview and so I was either fourth or fifth. So I didn't get, I didn't make the cut, ok, but so coaching had always been something I always thought I was going to do for the long haul, and hopefully at a fairly high level. But in 82, I went to, I went, I went to the desk and into the boardroom.
Rob Hartnett:I could understand the trip from Florida to Michigan would be a little bit easier than to Malaysia.
Kevin White:But it was a career of happenstance. You know, we went down to Newport. Ritchie never intended to be coaches and all of a sudden we're coaching everything at this very large school and you met your wife in the school environment.
Rob Hartnett:Undergrad.
Kevin White:We were undergrads together and I was a business major and Jane was a physical education major with the. She had the intent to be a teacher and I had the intent to go to corporate America, and it just never happened.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, well, that's their loss An education's gain, and when you were, when you were coaching secondary school, the difference between that and college sport is probably as great as there is a golf, almost, in sport, because you're bringing in wide-eyed young kids who are incredibly enthusiastic but who would have a very wide range of ability and potential by the time you get to college. That potential is being realized.
Kevin White:Yes, yeah, and it's, and it's more focused and you're recruiting kids with a certain level of expertise and talent and experience, so the gap isn't quite so large. It's a pretty narrow group of pretty talented kids. And we had my. My first collegiate job was at Central Michigan University up in Mount Pleasant, michigan, and it I mean happenstance again, if I may, my whole career has been happenstance. So we arrived there in the U-Haul truck with our young family, only to be met by the then head coach of the track and field program who had just accepted the head coaching position for the country of South Korea. And so this 25-year-old guy is now the interim head coach and I love that and so I was kind of in charge early on and no longer are we there a week or two and the then women's coach resigns and they make Jane the women's coach. So we're a coaching duet at Central Michigan University after Gulf High School in Newport, ritchie, florida, by total happenstance and had great kids, great success, great kids, great talented kids allow you to have great success. It's not that complicated and we had some just really great ones.
Kevin White:And then on to basically with a misstep, and that's in the book, we ended up at Southeast Missouri State and I had a nice run there a brief run, but very high-end athletes. And then I was finishing my doctorate in 1982, and people started pounding on the door hey, would you be interested in becoming a small college athletics director? And I had buyer's remorse. I I turned down the job twice. Third time they came back. I took it to this day. I don't know why the hell I took it, but I loved every second. I was at Loris College, a little Catholic school in Dubuque.
Rob Hartnett:Iowa. Yeah, was that a like that move away from? I know a lot of coaches. I do a bit of coaching myself and a part of the thrill is the engagement you have with you, particularly at that younger end where you actually see a skill being taught. I never wanted to be a teacher until I became a coach and then I realized maybe that was a calling that I kind of passed up on. But transitioning from being on the sideline to being in the committee room is different, much different, much, much different.
Kevin White:You know, I can kind of tell you this I've been on this crazy book tour and I said to you maybe off air a few minutes ago, I probably have done and I should know the real number maybe 15, a minimum of 12 of these stops already. And so I was at Southeast Missouri State about a month ago on a Tuesday night or whatever, and had 200 people all from my time when I coached there, and in through the door walks a kid that I hadn't seen in 42 years. That was a world-class. I heard word Olympic trials, multiple time All-American, and the feeling was so overwhelming and the connectivity to this kid I mean. Now I know why I loved it so much. I've never lost any of that passion, but the book has been a great conduit to my past and going back to communities where we once worked and served and kids and coaches, head and assistant and university administrators and the like.
Kevin White:So it's really reconnected me to the last half a century.
Rob Hartnett:It's great, isn't it? I never thought about it that that would occur, because you have touched so many lives. And then the book comes out and people, they just tilt their head and they think, oh my God, I haven't seen Kevin or Coach or however they would have referred you to in so long. And then they buy the book and then they realize, oh my God, he's going to be in town so they will go along.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, much easier for them. They know you. Yeah, has there been many instances when people have come up and you know?
Kevin White:Rob, more than I can account for here on the spot, but it's been crazy. It's been absolutely crazy, you know, and it's so gratifying. I was at Lawrence College about a month and a half ago in Dubuque, iowa, and you know that was one of these under-resourced places like a small college, of these under-resourced places like a small college, what we call it Division III in the States, and anyway. So I'm hiring 22, 23, and 24-year-olds right out of college to coach sports, olympic sports, wrestling, swimming, track, whatever and these guys are all in their 60s now and they came to the event and they're telling me about their. You know that they've raised their children and these are the colleges and universities that kids attend and they've had grand lives. It is really gratifying, so, to kind of reconnect to yesteryear, and I never thought I would feel that you know that strongly about it, but I have. That's been the beauty of this book. It's been fun.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, it's a good way to get through a career, though, and to have no regrets and to have plenty of joy in your own heart, I do, about what you've done.
Kevin White:I feel very, very lucky. I feel like I held up a Prince truck, to be honest with you. Yeah, I'm just one of those guys. You know I never expected everything that's happened and have enjoyed every second of it.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, that's really cool. So from the Division III colleges all the way to Notre Dame that you land in to us from this side of the Atlantic. Anyway, you know the fight in Irish. There is a very deep connection back to Ireland, your New York Irish background and heritage. Did you turn them down once or twice when they came knocking?
Kevin White:No, no, no, no, I couldn't turn them down, no, and I didn't see that one coming. Actually I don't know what they had, it's too many years ago but three or four finalists and they were all Notre Dame grads and I was not. And then I got the invitation and I was there for eight years. I loved every second of it. But you know, we went from Loris College, the little Catholic school which had a historical connection to Notre Dame that nobody really knew until I kind of got there and we put it together and it's outlined in the book. It's a mystical connection between those two schools.
Kevin White:Anyway and I won't spoil the read for people that are listening hoping they'll get the good sport and check it out but in any event, you know, we went to from Loras on to the University of Maine. I went, I took a, I did a postdoctoral program at Harvard and I met some people from Maine and they invited me to come up there as their athletics director and I had never even been to the state of Maine before and I took the job and loved it and from there I got invited down to Tulane in New Orleans and again, that was an incredible experience. I loved that a lot and our kids went high school down in New Orleans and great high school athletics in New Orleans which prepared my kids to play in college, and then from there to Arizona State. So we circled the country over there and then we went out to Tempe, arizona, and that school was like it had the new car smell, I mean it was.
Kevin White:When we got there it was about 55,000 students. Today it's well over 100,000 with online students. So I mean that was really great. And then, you know, and at that point at Arizona State, rob, I tell you, I really felt like we were going to, that was going to be our place and we were going to stay, go the distance and had opportunities that you know. I probably shouldn't say the names of the schools, but UCLA and Michigan. Ucla I had an opportunity.
Kevin White:In Michigan, I had an opportunity to be one of three to go through the beauty contest and chose not to and so once we kind of declined I thought we were there and then the good father's called and when they called all bets were off. And if you read the book you'll understand why. I had a stint in a pre-seminary experience and a very Irish Catholic family and grandparents lived with us from Dunlow, donegal, when I grew up. So all of that, so glory be to God. Kevin's going to be a priest.
Rob Hartnett:Well, sport is great. For that, you didn't quite make it. You could have still done both, that's for sure.
Rob Hartnett:My own daily football coaches were all Franciscan priests and brothers and one lay teacher who happened to have won an All-Ireland the first All-Ireland that was won by County Down a guy called Joe Lennon. Yeah, so the priests were at a fairly strong influence at the time. College sport in the US is something which is visceral. It is so embedded within the heartbeat, thena of every college that you look at you, we hear the names of the colleges and we automatically think of the uniform and we automatically think of you know the big occasions and the bowls and and all of the rest of it. We've never quite been able to capture that in ireland or in the uk or in europe. What is it? Having been there for so long, is there anything you think that is possible in the US that has just not yet perhaps proven to be the case here?
Kevin White:Well, you know college sports I often say it's tribal and people feel a real connection to the state university and or if it's a private institution that doesn't have that state university public institution kind of monolithic public institution kind of frame to it, it's captivating and it's a place where people go and grow and and and they get. They get emotionally, if not affectionately, involved. So the institutional side of college athletics is is the academy side, is has a pretty has an awful lot to do with it. It's interesting because I was telling somebody just this morning that in 1993, and it would take too long of a digression I got invited, my wife and I, to Maynooth and it had been St Patrick's College at one point and I don't know it's had two or three name iterations, I think, and they were talking about there were three priests that ran the place even though it's a state college, I know it is and one had a Fordham background, one had a Boston college, the other guy was Georgetown and we stayed up late night and drank a lot of brown juice in the little rectory on the campus or whatever it would be for the president's quarters and they wanted to talk about could we create college athletics, not unlike the States, even in that size and scope of an institution, and I ended up writing something for them about basketball and track and field and it would help raise level of awareness of the institution, compete for students and the other thing.
Kevin White:The theme of that visit was about university development and that philanthropy had not been a big you know, a big situation in Irish colleges and universities. And so it's interesting as I over the years now, because we've come back here almost every year, sometimes twice in a year, and I've seen, you know, the club sports, if not the intercollegiate sports system, grow here. I mean, it's got traction now but it isn't where the United States is, but it is interesting to me. One more digression I became really good friends with my counterpart at Oxford years ago and he would talk about the fact that they didn't have like an NCAA and they didn't have like a parent organization and they had a lot of you know.
Kevin White:he was held responsible for the outcome, but there was no initial eligibility. It wasn't a level playing field and all this business.
Kevin White:But I was fascinated that you know a lot of the things that we're doing in the States they'd like to emulate in terms of athletics tied to the academy. But it's interesting to me that American higher education was created after or to be not unlike Western Europe and emulate Western Europe, and that's Harvard and Virginia and all the great schools in the United States. And now Western Europe is starting to think about building this school and sport model like we have, and we're the only country in the world with this school and sport model. You know, I served on the Olympic Committee for eight years and I mean, without the school and sport model that we have, the NCAA system, we would not have a Team USA.
Rob Hartnett:No, it is the ultimus in terms of, you know, progressing youthful athletes through to compete against each other at the very highest level, and it is. I guess the philanthropy side of it does definitely play a part. I remember when a former colleague of yours from Notre Dame was over speaking at an event here and I was interviewing her and I asked her I said well, what proportion of your funding comes from the state or from federal funds?
Rob Hartnett:and it was just zero, zero yeah that there was nothing and so all of the money has to be driven in. And what is the language that appeals to people? That will tug on the heartstrings better than anything else said.
Kevin White:You just said it, so well, that is the language it's poor.
Rob Hartnett:So like we've got, we've got wonderful. We do a lot of work with colleges here in in ireland, in in belfast, in dublin and limerick, cork and all over, and the facilities that we have in the sporting arenas here are fabulous. Yes, you know, like national sports campuses, yes, at every turn, and you know the competition is is intense, but it doesn't live beyond the college. So maybe that's the. That's the next thing. Let me ask you about the college football classic, now sponsored by Ellingers, who you probably fly with whenever you're coming backwards and forwards. For the most part the. The idea of playing a college game outside of the college stadium must have been bizarre. I've seen it. I've seen the crowds. I've seen crowds of 110 000 in a town which has a population of 20 000 and the overarching dominance of this big team playing eight, nine times a year maximum. The idea of taking one of those out of that environment and bringing them over to Dublin must have felt bizarre when it was first put.
Kevin White:Yeah, and I wasn't a part of the first one speaking about Notre Dame coming over here, but I was very much a part of the second one in 2012. I was no longer at Notre Dame, but it occurred while I was at Duke in 2012. We signed a long-term agreement with Navy and Navy was to take one of their home games over here, which ended up being 2012. But the opportunity I mean I think that's so multidimensional. Rob, you know the opportunity for young people, student athletes to have, you know the opportunity for young people, student athletes, to have, you know an overseas experience is priceless and you know all of our colleges and universities in the States have programs for students to go across, to go around the world, pardon me, international kinds of programs, study abroad programs, as they call them.
Kevin White:But for athletes that's really hard because the training and competition cycles like 50 weeks out of the 52 a year, and so to take an opportunity to take a hundred kids through Aer Lingus and bring them over to Dublin to play in a football game is pretty priceless for those kids and the fans tend to want to do something unique and special as well and kind of a memorialize a moment and with a certain group of kids and kids. They're attached to meeting teams and so forth and it just, you know it's worked so well over here and it's worked fairly well in other places, but not quite the same as it has worked in Dublin. And I mean there's a magic to Ireland and really a quite a magic to Dublin itself and I just know fans and athletes have just loved coming here, yeah, and the connection that so many Americans draw back to Ireland.
Rob Hartnett:so there's a lot more American Irish than there are Irish for sure 40,.
Kevin White:they say between 40 and 45 million have Irish blood in the United States, 70 million around the world. Yeah, I mean it's incredible.
Rob Hartnett:Oh yeah.
Kevin White:A small country.
Rob Hartnett:We are a diaspora nation.
Kevin White:And, by the way, I mean you've built the United States and you know my ancestors were part of that. I mean, so I'm very proud of the fact that the impact the Irish have had, not just on the United States, which is where I'm, I guess, a first citizen of, but around the world. Yeah, and I actually have dual citizenship, oh, very good. Oh yeah, it's kind of fun.
Rob Hartnett:I could have been speaking in a similar accent to you. My great grandfather was actually born in Boston. Oh yeah, Is that right. He came back as a young man to fight in the War of Independence and never left. I see he stayed, so he was part of the original. His parents were part of that immigration in the kind of the 1870s, 1880s, yeah, and he was born over there, but then he was probably the 1% that actually came back at that stage. So there you go.
Kevin White:My grandparents came in 1907. And it was a brutal time to make the trek over to Ellis Island and the lowest rung on the socioeconomic ladder where the Irish no mix for hire Irish need not apply, and my grandfather went under protest and really never took to the English language and they grew up in our house and I knew him as an older man but, and my grandmother, both probably in their fifties and sixties, when I really remember them at the best, but but you know, had a had kind of a tough emigration, really tough, and you know, later on it I think it went smoother for Irish that emigrated, but in the, you know, at the turn of the last century, not so much.
Rob Hartnett:Oh yeah, and it was very much a one-way ticket there was no, coming back, you weren't going to be coming back to support Donegal in an.
Rob Hartnett:All-Ireland final, if that was the order of the day and the business connection that is forged out of that as well. We have a brilliant US-Ireland CEO club lunch which is always on the Friday before the game here in Dublin and we have kind of almost every living Taoiseach that will be there in the room cabinet ministers, government officials, the high and the good and the great and the mighty, and the occasional average person like myself, the occasional average person, like, like, like myself. But the the connection that you get from chatting to people who might not have been back in ireland for 20 years or that have gathered together a group of their friends and their colleagues and they come back. They want to golf over in the west of ireland, down in the Courses down in Kerry, they wanted to imbibe on Dublin's hospitality and everything else Like that. The value of that to Dublin, the value of that to those who participate in it, is enormous, all spilling from the idea of one game of football yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Kevin White:Yeah, I mean the economic impact has got to be. I'm sure they've done studies and you know I was chair of the NCAA men's basketball and in fact I was the unfortunate chair that pulled the plug with COVID, and that's a billion dollar event, just one event.
Kevin White:The timing of March Madness, when COVID hit was pretty poor yeah it was horrible and, in any event, you know the economics around these sporting events is really quite something. It's beyond most people's wildest comprehension. I have a friend who's just retired from Notre Dame, actually, and he wrote a great book called Keeping Score Economics of Big Time Sport and, again, he was probably one of the leading economists on sport and his name was Richard Sheehan and in any event, I used to have him. I teach a sport business class and I used to have him do a computation for me almost every year and the last one I did was 2015. So it's dated. You know what is the economic impact of sport domestically, in our country? What's the impact of sport globally? And the last two numbers I had carefully computated by this guy were about a trillion dollars in the United States sport, all forms, anything related to sport and about $4 trillion globally. I mean, it is powerfully big business and it doesn't account for the emotional side, as you were kind of drifting into.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, and the emotional side is really important, but that is leveraged into the financial side of it, so it doesn't negate it, it doesn't destroy it, it doesn't pour oil over the. You know the joy of actually sort of being involved in sport, but by virtue of reaching out to business. That means that more people can play sport, more people can watch sport, more people can participate and and be a part of the party. We had some some folks from indianapolis and the state of indiana over here for an event a couple of years ago as well, and that was where you know ncaa, that's the, that's the base, that's the, that's the home, home city and the home state. The way that college sport is moving now with name, image and likeness, the thought of paid athletes coming in, is it something that you personally would relish the challenge of, or is it something that you're kind of thinking? I'm worried about where this is going.
Kevin White:You know well I'd be really less than honest if I didn't say I wasn't worried. I am worried. I don't think we've got it figured out. You know we're building the plane while it's in the air and it's pretty frightening actually. And you know I was very much kind of a participant in the system during my latter years at Duke and I could see what was coming. And actually when I was chairing the NCAA men's basketball committee I got I was asked if I would consider chairing the NIL committee.
Kevin White:Smartest thing I ever did is to not use the basketball committee to kind of say that I couldn't do it and quite frankly, I thought it was right from the jump. It was ill-conceived and we just have yet to figure out how to build guardrails and to maintain any resemblance of a level playing field and to maintain any resemblance of a level playing field. And so right now we have a play-for-pay system which we've argued against since the beginning of the NCAA, which is 117 years, and so it's a dramatic difference and really quick, rob, I can tell you, years ago, when I coached at different places, I couldn't give a kid a ride home from practice in a hurricane it was what they called illegal via very stringent NCAA rules, and now we're buying the whole team Broncos. I mean, it's just gone from. It's gone from. Both ends of that continuum are crazy and of where we were and where we are now. So I don't know that it's sustainable. That's kind of the word of the day that I just spoke at a large NCA event in the last three weeks with about three or four hundred people on there right there in Indianapolis, and again, I'm the guy that's not tethered to a school anymore.
Kevin White:I'm not worried about recruiting, I'm not worried about any of the other stuff. I'm just trying to be a truth teller. This isn't manageable what we're doing, and we didn't think it out really well and you know, maybe at some point, if you can roll back time which you can't, unfortunately maybe we should have came up with a financial stipend for all kids at a certain level and financial stipend for all kids at a certain level, and it would have been a hell of a lot more manageable. But we didn't have the vision to think about, about doing that then, and or did we want to get rid of the whole notion of amateurism, which was antiquated, but we weren't prepared to do that, and so now we're yet even less prepared to do this. You know where we've got.
Kevin White:You know again, I'm really close to the coaches at Duke. Still, my son's a coach, another son's in AD, a third son's in AD, and so I mean I hear the war stories and so we're not. We're dogfighting for kids in the recruiting process and we're not getting leverage to jump up tens of thousands of dollars. We're jumping up hundreds of thousands of dollars, and so there's a lot of funny money, rob, in the system that's what I call it and we got here because we didn't have a lot of practitioners at the table. We had a lot of people that had bright ideas and were well-intended, but they didn't understand consequences, and so now we're dealing with consequences of people that really hadn't been so to speak in the foxhole.
Kevin White:Don't understand a locker room. Don't understand recruiting, understand the agents Now we've made permissible for kids to have it. The people that are making the real resource out of this crazy system are agents and lawyers, and a lot of kids are getting short sheeted. You know they're being promised these grand sums of income from colleges and universities and a lot of them they're being defaulted on. So that'll be another round of lawsuits that's yet to raise its ugly head.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah it's tricky, but it's got. There are lessons to be learned for us here in Ireland as well. Our own Gaelic Athletic Association is formed on the basis of amateurism and the fact that players play for no stipend yeah coaches coach for no stipend, volunteers volunteer and the whole system.
Rob Hartnett:It kind of it's almost like a bumblebee. You look at it and you think how does that work? Yeah, how can they build a stadium for 82, 300 people in crow park and how can they do all of this and nobody gets any money out of it? And and yes, it is still very much in the heart. So if you're a, you happen to be the greatest hurler ever to live and you're from county wicklow. You will play for county wicklow, yeah, and you will never get anywhere near. Maybe.
Kevin White:Ireland's 2025 and 26 and 27 should be like the United States 1985, 1986, 1987. Maybe we should have gotten there. That was kind of my point. Maybe we should have gotten there before we had to or or felt like we had to, but again, um, the absence of real practitioners in our system has really hurt us.
Kevin White:You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of a war around sport. We all know this, and so, if you allow my New York cynicism to come out here unbridled but we had a lot of people want to be in the toy store and understand the toy store, and so they got in there. They get a lot of fandom and we can do all of this and we can be innovative and we can be contemporary and new age, but you don't understand the consequences. And so now we're holding our butts thinking about how do we do this new age, contemporary thing, because eventually the funny money will go away, in my opinion, or at least it'll get, it'll diminish yeah, it is true, the passion of sport and the passion of sport engenders in people can be a double-edged sword.
Rob Hartnett:It can, it can we never want to put it away?
Kevin White:no, but you mentioned guardrails, and that's yeah, everybody in sport is looking to gain an advantage. Yeah, because it you wouldn't be in this subset if you didn't want to win, and what. We're trained to find ways to beat our competitor. And so if you take the rules off of compensation, we're just going to outspend people. I mean, the Yankees have done that since the beginning of time. I mean, yeah, but that's what will happen here and it is what's happening you know I love the idea that the nfl is.
Rob Hartnett:You know the construct owned by 32 billionaires generally, not exclusively, but you know, older and white and male, and yet it is perhaps the most socialist form of sporting endeavor that we have the draft and you know, the best will go to the worst until everything balances out.
Kevin White:Yeah, yeah but there is, even though the families and or the ownership groups there's some practitionerism there. You're not getting a guy that comes out of you know, out of banking industry or automotive industry and running a franchise.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah.
Kevin White:They won't allow that to happen. I mean, you have to approve ownership and so the decision makers are. There's a construct there that kind of keeps it civil and workable.
Rob Hartnett:Okay, Before I let you go, there's well, there's a couple of things. I want to dive into leadership a little bit with you. You have been a leader and you have been responsible for appointing leaders at the next level. What is it that you look for in a person's character that makes you think they're going to be a great head coach?
Kevin White:This may come off as trite, and I don't want. I certainly don't want that, but I think a lot about it because you're in, I think, in sport at least I've been for almost 50 years in the leadership development business and in the leadership acquisition business. So leadership is a big part of this thing, and I'll digress in a second, but I'll come back to the relationship between leadership and politics. I used to think they were two separate entities and now, four years out of the chair, they are. They're, they're twins, they're related and so. But in any event, when I, when I think about leadership, I talk about in my class, a lot. You know, if you, if you take a look at anything that's ever been written in all the different studies, you know, if you, if you take a look at anything that's ever been written in all the different studies, I would say, first and foremost, at Duke, we, we have all these schools and every, every school has its own leadership course or class, and I suspect that would be true at Trinity and be everywhere. And I think if you brought all the leadership experts in a room and asked them to define it, you'd have a lot of different definitions of because they they say they know it when they see it, but they don't know exactly what it is, and so in my class I've tried to synthesize what everybody has said and boil it down to four things, and I've used this like crazy over the years in hiring and in terms of leadership development as well.
Kevin White:I think the number one characteristic is empathy. I don't think you can be a really good leader once you're pretty darn empathetic, and I think the real authentic empathy comes from the bassinet, it's DNA, it's who your people are, it's who you are. That gets formed early, before it can be learned, and I think that that's a big point here. But people that are really highly empathetic again have a chance if it's authentic have a chance to become pretty extraordinary leaders, in my opinion. The second one is a leader needs to be task oriented, and it doesn't mean that you and I need to do everything button up, finish, close but we need to surround ourselves with people that can button up, finish and close, and I think that's a pretty important characteristic of a leader as well. The third one is a leader needs to be adaptable, flexible and situational. I think about that a lot.
Kevin White:I can remember over the years a coach would come in an interview all prepared with whatever 30, 40-way paper, five colors charts, and he would tell me the offense he's going to run, how he's going to run. He wouldn't even know the team, he wouldn't know the players, he wouldn't know the competition. You know predetermined. What I did at the last stop will work here. That never works, quite frankly. So the third characteristic is flexibility, situational and adaptability. And then the last one I think a leader needs to be pretty intense, if not passionate. Who the hell's going to follow somebody that's not really excited and passionate about what they're doing? So those four characteristics is what I always shop hard for the X and O's and the wins and losses. Those are pretty easy to document. But those four characteristics, as I just laid them out there, rob, at least for me, were pretty impactful. Yeah, if I could find them.
Rob Hartnett:And you're right, the X's and O's, they're the outputs of the inputs. Yeah, and it's the inputs. That that's what comes from the coach. I'm delighted that you used empathy I think that's always my number one and curiosity as well. I love curious people. That's just the way that I think that you know you look around corners and you find things that might not have been so obvious. Other than that, let's finish off with just a couple of quick fire questions. I want to get to know Kevin White, the person, as opposed to Kevin White, the leader as such. So let me just throw them at you. No preparation as such. You said that you fly backwards and forwards to Ireland from the US. Would you look to see what was on the playlist of the movies or would you bring a book with you?
Kevin White:I would like to think, I would like to portend that I'm more intellectual than not. I think we all do so but I gravitate to movies. I'll take a look at the movie list and if there's something that doesn't really bite me, I bring the book out. So on this trip I brought two books with me on this particular trip. But I like to read and my life has been so fast-paced with my own five kids and their lives and everybody's involved in sports and games, and so we've been going 100 miles an hour for a long time. I always say when I retire which I'm 74 and I'm still not ready to retire I will read more. So I'd say I peruse the movie list, but more often than not I jump into a book.
Rob Hartnett:Okay, All of you listening to this, obviously you're going to be buying the Good Sport by Kevin.
Kevin White:White, thank you.
Rob Hartnett:In all good bookstores. What were the two books that you brought on the plane with you? I brought Blue Moth.
Kevin White:A guy named Bill Hancock wrote it. His son was a fatality in a plane crash. His son was a sports information director at Oklahoma State. It was a basketball team went down about a decade man, it's longer than that, probably 15, 18 years ago and he ran the NCAA men's basketball tournament years ago. I was just with him in Orlando not long ago and he and I were talking. He had just read the Good Sport and was telling me.
Kevin White:Thank God, I got a chance to meet Emmy and Rita, which are my parents' names, yeah, and he was telling me and I said I want to read your book. Well, I've got it and I'm three quarters through it, cool, so that's one. And the other one is Mike Bray, who is the basketball coach I hired at Notre Dame, who I love dearly, he's like a brother, and he's now an assistant with the Hawks in Atlanta, okay, and so he's just written a book with another friend of mine and that'll be on the return trip.
Rob Hartnett:Okay, my God, you'll have your own Barnes and Noble outfit with all of those that you've inspired along the way. Are you a tea or a coffee drinker? Coffee Coffee Too much actually.
Kevin White:I love coffee, that's the.
Rob Hartnett:American coming out as opposed to the Irish.
Kevin White:Oh yeah, I haven't found tea at all. I haven't found tea at all. I haven't discovered it.
Rob Hartnett:No cup of tea, yeah, which is, of course, an English and Indian construct. I don't know why we think of ourselves as being tea drinkers as such. What was the last thing that made you laugh out loud, you know?
Kevin White:it's funny because I got your note today and that question was there and my wife was in the hotel room with me and she said I haven't heard you laugh in a long time, until yesterday. And so what happened yesterday is I saw a video of one of our grandkids we have 16. And this is a three year old that they have in tennis lessons. My God, I can't believe a three year old. And she apparently didn't think she played very well or practiced very well, and she threw her racket and they were grabbing her and disciplining her and I'm and I busted out laughing. This is too much. You know her. Her father is a really really good college, was a really good college tennis player. Yeah, and this is taking it. She's three. Okay, her name is caroline and her last name is chapel. And my daughter, his wife, was a swimmer at duke and she's pretty competitive too. They got this damn kid at three years old playing tennis.
Rob Hartnett:I'm just going to take a record. I'm going to take a note of the name Caroline Chapel, because Earl Woods probably said the same thing about his son.
Rob Hartnett:I guess Bringing him out there as a three year old, but we won't pile that amount of pressure on met along the way. If you had to pick out one or two and I know this is like asking who your favorite child is, but was there somebody that continually comes back into your mind that you felt that you were in the presence of greatness when you were with them?
Kevin White:You know there's a boy, there's two or three that jump out. One is Father Ted Hesburgh, who was the president of Notre Dame for 35 years. I got very close to Father Ted and I've said in the book one of my quips about him is if I'm ever fortunate enough to go up top, it'll be anticlimactic, because I've already met the big guy and Father Ted Hesburgh was, I mean, a powerful, wise, noble, unqualified integrity, human being and spiritual on top of that, and I loved him and I could talk about him for hours. And then I had a benefactor at the University of Maine, a Jewish guy that I absolutely fell head over heels with and we had a tremendous relationship. I became like a surrogate to him.
Kevin White:His name is Harold Alfond and he owned the Dexter Shoe Company, started it from scratch and ended up selling it to Warren Buffett for whatever the share price was, at $12,000 a share, and 30 months later it was worth $84,000 a share and the last time I checked the other day it was $279,000 a share. So take him off your prayer list, harold Alfon, and he is one of the owners of the Red Sox. He's dead, but his family still owns part of the Red Sox and they bought Liverpool, but this guy was a philanthropist. Philanthropist and he was so generous and gracious he stunned me. He was so different than anyone else I've met. This wouldn't mean anything to you over here, but not long ago his foundation is called the Harold Alfon Foundation out of Portland, maine, gifted $300 million to the University of Maine and $100 million of the $300 million for athletics, and it's the largest single gift from a foundation or an individual to an American college or university in the history of the American Academy.
Kevin White:In one generation the guy did this and, of course, then he hooked up late in his life with Warren Buffett, and so he had a lot of disposable resource and he continues to keep on giving. Every baby that's born in Maine and this was his idea out of his foundation as he was passing would get $500 at their birth and so every and there's 12,000 babies born in Maine every year. It's a very small populated state, but 12,000 babies they all get $500 and it's for them to go to college, and so he was trying to create an aspiration. So I mean, this guy was ahead of his time, very unique, and I learned a ton about family, and my wife says you know any of the good things we've done with our family came from Harold. You know, harold, he had great designs on family, on how to create it and maintain it and nurture it and the rest of it so anyway, those are the guys.
Kevin White:Father Ted Hesburgh and Harold Alfond would be my two.
Rob Hartnett:Yeah, what a brilliant legacy to leave behind you that you would have that mark on you. And, as you say, we're always the product of everything around us our DNA, our family, those we work with, those we fall in love with and everything else. It's been a real pleasure to have a conversation with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. It's my honor. Thank you, as I say, the good sport, kevin White, phd. It is going to be available wherever you look and audio book coming out later on in the year.
Kevin White:It's available this afternoon on Amazon.
Rob Hartnett:This afternoon on Amazon and in all good bookstores as well. Kevin, it is genuine. Thank you, rob Pleasure. Thank you well, kevin, it is genuine pleasure, thank you, thank you appreciate it.
Rob Hartnett:Thank you, that was great spending time with somebody who has literally done it all in college sport in the united states of amer, a very different world to that which we experience in Europe, but one that we can only learn from.
Rob Hartnett:The Sport for Business podcast drops every week, with a few bonus episodes along the way as well, and next up in our leadership series of interviews is a chat with Enda Lynch, the CEO of Badminton Ireland, having spent perhaps two previous careers one in sponsorship with O2 back in the day and then with Munster Rugby establishing their high performance leadership group, before stepping up into the big seat as the CEO of the organization that was named recently as the National governing body of the year. So that will be with you next week if you want to learn more about the commercial world of irish sport. It's been a very busy period of time. Uh, you can catch up with all of the news, all of the stories and all of the analysis at sportforbusinesscom. It's been a pleasure having you with us today, as it always is, and we do take care.
