In 1999, a conference was held in Scottsdale, Arizona that generated the CHARACTER COUNTS! Pursuing Victory With Honor sports program. During the conference, Bob Costas asked Coach John Wooden about his decision to retire. The Coach launched into a description of “the last game I ever taught.”

He chose the phrase deliberately, knowing its impact, but this wasn't an artifice. Perhaps the greatest college basketball coach of all time really saw himself as a teacher.

A few years ago I interviewed Coach Wooden for a short video. He told a story about Amos Alonzo Stagg, a famous football coach who was asked, after an unusually successful season, whether his current team was his best ever. Wooden smiled as he related Stagg’s reply, “Oh, I won’t know that for another twenty years or so."

You see, Coach Wooden explained, Stagg knew that it would take that long to see how the youngsters under his supervision turned out in life. That, after all, is the real test of one's teaching.

Like Alonzo Stagg, John Wooden set out to teach his players not only how to win but how to live honorable and worthy lives. Even now, at 97, the Coach is likely to answer a question by reciting a poem. The last time I was with him he said:

No written word, nor spoken plea
Can teach our youth what they should be
Nor all the books on all the shelves
It's what the teachers are themselves

It is what Coach is himself that creates a legacy of wisdom, dignity, and honor and makes him an example to us all. The historian Henry Adams said, “A teacher affects all eternity. You never know where his influence stops.” So it will be for Coach John Wooden.

You may purchase a copy of the DVD of my interview with the Coach here.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.