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Coach Carter Rocks the Egg

"You won't get out of life alive, so live it!"

Entering the Egg auditorium Wednesday morning, attendees at the 18th annual Government Technology conference in Albany, N.Y. were met by the Christian Brothers Academy marching band, large bowls of yellow flowers on the stage, and a huge picture of Coach Carter and the logo "Average is just not good enough. Period!"

Average was not the watchword for the state, the government or the event. As New York State CIO Dr. Michael Mittleman pointed out, most of those who work in the public sector, "have chosen our careers to do good deeds, to help raise the quality of life for everybody." Ken Carter -- inspiration for the film "Coach Carter" starring Samuel L. Jackson -- said Mittleman, was cut from the same DNA.

For those who didn't see the film, Mittleman gave a quick rundown. Carter took over coaching at California's inner city Richmond High School and turned the 1999 team into a powerhouse with an undefeated season. But when the team ignored their academics, Carter locked the gym. As Carter told the audience later, the players hated him, their parents hated him, even his dog refused to fetch the newspaper.

Ken Carter

Carter joked that he's not as tall as Samuel L. Jackson, but he filled the Egg auditorium with his presence, his good humor, and his captivating stories. He came from McComb Mississippi, he said, a town so small one sign was used to tell visitors they were entering and leaving. He was raised with seven sisters in a family so broke, if they walked past a bank the alarms went off. But they were not poor, he said -- there's a difference.

When he started coaching at Richmond High School, he said, there were no nets on the baskets, no basketballs, no tennis shoes and no towels, which was good because the showers didn't work. Fifty percent of the kids didn't graduate high school and students were eighty times more likely to go to prison than to college -- Unless, he said -- you played for Coach Carter. Every one of his seniors went on to college, he said to applause from the audience.

Carter filled his presentation with motivational nuggets. "You don't get paid for the hours on the job," he said, "you get paid for the value you bring to those hours."

"Who said life was supposed to be easy? No one said it's supposed to be fair." His advice to his players: "Winning starts here," he said, pointing to his head. "Move the commitment you have in your head to your heart, and it shows up in what you do with your hands."

Carter had the audience laughing at his tactics. To get the players to do their homework in the library, he paid cheerleaders to study there. He gave each player $100,000 on paper and had them figure out how much that meant each minute was worth and how much they lost by goofing off. At the start of each season he made a DVD of the team's best plays and sent them to intimidate the coaches they would be playing that year. He had each player sign a contract covering deportment, dress, attendance, grades and more. And when they broke that contract, he launched the notorious lockout.

"You won't get out of life alive," he joked, "so live it! You don't have to have all the answers," he said, "leave that to a higher source. We talk ourselves out of success all the time. We think we're not tall enough, not smart enough, not fast enough."

As he was throwing packaged Coach Carter T-shirts into the audience, he pointed out one woman who snagged a shirt with one hand. "You were sitting there looking like a librarian," Carter said, "but when it came down to it, you reached up and grabbed it. You can play on my team anytime!" And by the end of his presentation the entire audience was on his team.
Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.