Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1001699
we were studying best practices. I don't know if we were looking around at what was going on in college football at the best programs and [asking whether] we were doing the things that we needed to do to stay on pace. I think for a long time, people were like, "We don't have to. We're Penn State." Well, you may be able to get away with that for a certain amount of years, but there comes a point where other organizations and other people just have too much horsepower. It's amazing. It's funny. We went around campus for move- in day the first couple of years and we wanted to move people in. People at first were looking at us like we were crazy. People were turning it down. I'm like, "You've got free labor! Take it!" I'm car- rying boxes and stuff. But I guess that's my point. When you watch these other organizations, they say, "Look, horse- power matters." You have one really tal- ented person who is able to handle a lot of different jobs. Well, what if you're able to hire five really talented people? How much more work is going to get done? And then it's funny, because we talk about facilities and I think people take it the wrong way. If you look at Google and you look at a lot of these companies, they're spending a tremen- dous amount of resources on creating a great work environment. Why? Because you get the best chance to get the most production out of your players, out of your staff. You create an environment where people want to come to work every single day. It's a healthy, safe envi- ronment where people want to be. They feel good about being there. They feel challenged, they feel supported, and that's really all we're trying to do. It's obviously a little bit more chal- lenging when you're trying to create a meeting room that a 6-foot-5, 325- pound kid is going to be comfortable in. It's funny, because people always come to our team meeting and they're like, "Wow, it's freezing cold in here." Well, it's freezing cold in here because we've studied what the exact temperature should be in a meeting room to keep people alert, to keep people awake and keep people locked in for long periods of time. All those things, all those small details are really what give you a chance to be successful over the long haul. All of which answers the question about fa- cilities spending becoming a competitive disadvantage. It works its way down. I know what the expecta- tion is here. Well, we can't say that this is the expecta- tion, but then not be willing to do the things that [com- parable] programs are doing. These are the pro- grams that we're going to be compared to, year-in and year-out, but we're not willing to do the things that they are. If you take the most successful businesses and organizations in the country, say you've got a top-10 organization, and you're not doing the things that the other top-10 programs are doing. SOMETHING TO SHOUT ABOUT Franklin has the Lions aiming for their third consecu- tive top-10 finish in the AP poll, a feat they haven't ac- complished since 1980-82. Photo by Steve Manuel