Mr. Martin's Cross

People who have met him say he is an imposing figure, a big man’s big man. Tall and wide with eyes that can stare a hole through you.  Yes, Frank Martin is all of that, and he also knows his stuff. He knows it so well that, taking the package as a whole, people pay a great deal of money to have him on their team.  Just think, $12.3 million dollars for six years of work. Just this year he is making $1.9 million, and his employer paid his former employer $1 million just for the opportunity to hire him away.

And what is it that Mr. Martin does? Cure diseases? Manage hundreds of jobs? Create lasting art?  Mr. Martin is a basketball coach for the University of South Carolina; the leader of the Gamecocks men’s team.  Mr. Martin was hired partly because he is a good coach, but mostly, I think, because he gets angry. He gets angry a lot.  His stare is worth the price of admission and it helps in filling the stands, 18,000 seats at a time.  But, this year, Mr. Martin has become a caricature of himself.  He engages in behavior which, in any other employment setting would get you fired faster than you can say “where’s the door?”  Mr. Martin is an angry man, and that has become his cross to bear.  He recently was caught on camera berating a freshman player.  Can you imagine what would happen if a professor or administrator cussed out a 19 year-old boy in front of his classmates?  Well, the Athletic Director for South Carolina, Ray Turner, must have felt it was time to send a message to his very expensive coach. So he suspended him.  For one game. One game. Wow, that sure is sending a message. I wonder if it’s the message Mr. Turner intended to send.

Mr. Martin claims he doesn’t want to be The Angry Man. When he was hired he said, “What you see in six seconds on ESPN is nothing like I am.” Wishful thinking, Frank.  Maybe Mr. Martin can use his night off to read about one of the greatest coaches ever, John Wooden.  Coach Wooden rarely yelled at his players because it was, “artificial stimulation, which doesn’t last very long.”  But Coach Wooden was subject to passionate outbursts. He controlled them by carrying a little cross in his pocket, clutching it during every game. It wasn’t a magic device or a good luck charm. It was a simple reminder to the Coach that there is something more important than basketball.  Maybe if Mr. Martin tried carrying a little cross he could get rid of his big cross.

How about for you?  Do you have a cross to bear? Anger, gossip, lust, vanity, pride?  Could you use the Coach’s cross as a way to remind you, when confronted with temptation, that there is a another way to deal with life than being weighed down by the cross you created?