This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Yes, it is Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk,
educated educators talking education,
first downs Friday night lights.
Johnny Lupinacci, how are you, my friend?
It's good, Tim. It's always good to be here with you.
And I love these Friday drops because I mean, all year around,
I find an excuse to be a sports enthusiast, a sports fan,
and as a coach, stay busy. But this is a special time of year, right?
I mean, it's football playoff season for all these high school teams
and all these listeners out there. So we've got another week of football.
It's, you know, it's getting shorter and shorter of a list.
And, you know, the parody is thick in high school football,
as it should be, as we head into state championships coming up pretty soon.
But, you know, all the sports are really fire and all cylinders this time of year.
And extracurriculars are special.
And I love when we get together to do these special episodes,
first downs Friday night lights, but it's really just a fun way to get together
and talk about the other dimensions.
Right.
Public education that often gets separated out,
and then myths start spinning.
Right.
So we started talking a little bit about that a couple of weeks ago,
Tim, about being a student athlete,
and about the well-roundedness of being part of an athletics program,
not only at the high school level, but at the collegiate level,
and the way it prepares young people for life.
And of course, I'm biased.
I'm as a coach, a teacher, and a, you know, a professor.
Now coach also, I mean, I couldn't give up those two things,
but I'm not going to give up the other hand and hand.
But Tim, we got a special guest with us today.
Want you to introduce him and let's go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, check this out too for our guest too.
We've got two intros here because I want to set this,
set the stage with this intro number one.
All right.
Everybody ready for this one?
Yeah.
We're ready.
He's a three time all Ohio linebacker Harvard football letterman
of the 1985 team, setting records and earning AP All-American recognition.
Football taught him the value of grit, teamwork, and resilience,
shaping his leadership to transformative roles across multiple sectors.
Welcome to busted pencils, Brent Wilkinson.
All right.
That's one intro.
Got another intro, though, too, because here's the other.
He graduated from Harvard College with honors and economics
and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
He's a powerhouse entrepreneur with four successful exits,
including IBM's $2 billion acquisition of Turbonomic,
where he took on the roles like Chief Strategy, Chief People,
and Chief Information Officer.
He's a transformation leader.
Man, welcome to busted pencils, Brent Wilkinson.
The question, Brent, which one are you?
None of the above.
I'm a dumb jock.
That's what you asked for.
I'll let you jump in with that line, Brent.
Welcome to busted pencils.
How are you?
Thank you, Tim.
Thank you.
Johnny, I appreciate the invitation here.
Well, as Johnny said, we have our specials on Friday.
Friday, you know, first downs, Friday nights.
And we say the extra curriculars, the essentials.
And we started with Friday night football, really leaning in on that.
But we've been having these conversations about the role.
And let's just say, you know, we extra curriculars,
but we're calling them essential curriculars here.
How they played to that overall development
towards the contributing member of society,
not just the contributing athlete.
And you Brent turned me on to a piece that came across
in, I think it was Harvard Magazine.
Why Ivy Athletes score in careers?
How does undergraduate participation in varsity sports enhance career success?
This is by Jonathan Shaw, the November, December, 2024 edition.
And they ask a simple question.
Ivy League Athletics and the contribution of being an athlete.
How does that bear later in life when we look at all of the other
ways that you can be successful?
And the research comes across, Brent, that, you know what?
Well, maybe you dumb jocks might take a couple spots from other people
that in the end, though, you guys actually do better earning,
better in leadership, all kinds of things.
And they speculate that maybe it has something to do with the fact
that all that grit and resilience you taught,
we talked about in your bio, Brent, that you learned to develop
during those 20 hours plus a week working as a student athlete,
your thoughts, Brent Wilkinson.
Well, look, I appreciate it.
And look, I have to connect the first thing you said is there are central curriculars.
That's one of the things I love about busted pencils.
You talk about this is not creating well-rounded members of society.
Okay.
And look, in Johnny, you coach, right?
You coach between the ears.
All right.
That's where it is.
And a lot of things happen between the ears.
So look at the classroom.
This is important.
It teaches us a great many number of things.
But I think it's Paul Gompress and his beast.
Look, there's so many other things that we learn.
We learn how to collaborate.
We learn how to be vulnerable.
We learn how to fail.
We learn how to deal with those things that are resilient.
And look, athletics are not the sole venue for learning those things.
But one of the things that we all know is athletics really is gift to the young.
Really not the old.
So you have limited time to pick these things up.
And so it's not only through athletics.
I know a number of people have learned these lessons being part of stage teams
and being part of clubs and things like that.
But I think the thing with this unique about athletics is truly a competition.
All right.
And so you learn how to be vulnerable.
Hey, I'm getting my ass kicked here.
What are we going to do?
All right.
Now my team is going to pick me up.
Or I've never met an athlete that did in the middle of some strenuous workout.
Wanted to quit.
All right.
And if they didn't pull themselves up, it was usually somebody or, you know,
I'm sure we all have had people in our lives.
You know, coaches put their arm around your shoulder and go, okay, look.
You know, this is a short time.
We're going to get through it.
So there's so many lessons.
And again, I have a heavy bias.
I don't know what it's like to be a non-hap watch.
I do now.
But back then.
You know, it's, I don't know, it's like not to go through that.
But it's, I love what you guys talk about the essential curriculars.
And it's not just athletics.
And by the way, we don't take spots from people.
What happens is Harvard and many other universities look for well-rounded people.
Just like it's well-rounded.
I love it.
You know, our civic responsibility is not being athletic.
It's not only being academic.
It's being a lot of different roles.
And you learn that through school, who are the extracurriculars.
So.
Yeah, I'm so glad.
I love that, Bren.
And I love that you also took away that, you know, little bar by through out there
that you guys take those places.
Because that is kind of this feeling that somebody's like, you know,
whether it's Harvard, whether it's Washington state,
whether it's Edinburgh University of Pennsylvania, you know,
where some other guy on busted pencils went to school.
You know, that's where all these things happen.
I just thought to remember.
608-557-857-777-608-557-857-857-777.
Just a quick reminder there, Jess, thanks for reminding me.
That's our mailbag number.
You can drop in, leave us some comments and some thoughts.
But, Bren, you know, thinking about that, the idea that.
What is it about athletes, though, in particular,
that seem that there's this rub that we go, well, they're just an athlete.
They must have got special treatment to get where they are.
I love this research because this is research because the research
really points out here and saying, you know, that's not true.
But where does this myth come from that athletes get better treatment,
get better results and the sense of, you know, if they weren't playing football,
you know, they would have never been at this college
they would have never been here.
Where's that come from?
I think it's a natural assumption.
You know, I think that it is really some athletics and it's raw.
You know, there are people that box, boxing clubs, and so on like that.
So it's really easy to, yeah, easy to assume like it.
There's really not much that is to it from an academic or intellectual standpoint.
And it's, I can see where they get that draw those conclusions to your question
on the preferential treatment.
Look, there are programs.
There are big time football programs at the college level
where the student athletes are treated extraordinarily.
But they're almost rock stars.
You see that with the NIL going on now, right?
So I can see where there's a bit of that celebrity,
but one of the things that you learn, and I learned it actually,
believe it or not in eighth grade, the eighth grade English teacher
that was a poem by A.E. Houseman on an athlete dying young.
Look, that glory does not last.
All right, so you got to think about what it, you know, what goes on after.
So is a preferential treatment, I think, to a degree,
and I think a lot of people, and look, the whole college in high school experience,
I remember Friday nights.
Boy, the whole town came out.
Right?
And it's, you know, it's a point of civic participation
and that people raised money, and there was a pageantry.
And yeah, so you feel special, but the same thing happens, you know,
with plays, high school plays, debates, and things like that.
So I think that, you think about, I can understand where to get some of that attention,
but it's fleeting, and you get a lot of athletes that do live in the past and so on.
Most of them, and I know though, they go, okay, let me, let me take, you know,
those lessons that I learned, how do you set a big goal, breaking the smaller pieces?
How do I realize that one person's not an island?
You know, if you want to go fast, go by yourself, you want to go far, go as a team.
So all those things, Tim, I think, that I can understand where people might draw the conclusions,
but I think it's shallow thinking.
Johnny Lupinati.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with Brent's response, you know,
his contribution to this myth-busting here that, you know,
just because we have big cases like the NIL, especially Anna has brought so many,
especially college athletes into the forefront of, you know, their earning money
while they're still technically amateur athletes.
And they're also student athletes.
It doesn't take away from that requirement that their student athletes.
And I love that Brent brought it up, Tim, and UT's did a bit,
there's this myth out there that, you know, that athletes across all the sports
are celebrated for their athletic ability only.
And that's just not the case.
Every single college athlete has to be admitted into that college
and those admission standards don't change for those students,
even if they're on full scholarship or anything.
It's considered, like we call them, extracurriculars are essentials,
it's considered a well-roundedness to their college application
and that they're academically already eligible, right,
to be considered for admission into these great schools.
And so it's really important to remember that student athletes are students first.
Even the ones making millions of dollars in the NIL have a requirement
to be students first.
They happen to have a really great, close to full-time job
that has some accommodations for their student requirements.
But they have to meet those student requirements
and believe me, especially if we take football, for example,
and we look at the work that those young athletes are putting in day in and day out
and the regimen that they're on and the leadership
and the roles they're in to have a quality program.
And that's at any school, high school, or college.
But there's a lot of work.
It is not a short, easy work week.
It is not a life of partying or anything like that.
It is school work.
And what I mean by work is that time and as an athlete, any sport,
they're working out, they're taking care of their health,
they're getting their rest, they're going to class,
rents, repeat over and over again,
and they are really on a grind.
And I'm not saying that other college students aren't,
but it's really important to recognize that the red carpet
isn't necessarily rolled out and then there's these four years
of a life of luxury or even two years
if they go into the professional realm earlier or anything.
They are working really hard.
And so I love what we're celebrating that well-roundedness
as early as we can.
And we say, all of us as coaches, we've been there
and as athletes, we've heard this too.
You're preparing for life.
I elect that Brent says, like sports help give us
that opportunity to experience vulnerability,
to experience loss, to have adversity,
to have to turn towards others,
to learn to depend on one another,
establish trust and work hard.
I mean, those are core democratic values.
So we're learning and practicing them
and not saying that everything's necessarily a competition,
but being a great member of your community,
you benefit when you've been part of a team.
Even if it's an individual sport,
you've worked out with other athletes,
you've collaborated, you've had adversity,
you've pushed really hard and learned from loss and gain.
Those are huge life skills.
So obviously, I'm biased to him, you know, my background,
but I really love these programs so much.
And I love Mythbustin, because I didn't realize
that it was still prominent out there.
People would think like, oh, well, you know,
someone playing for Harvard football took a space
from a 4.0 student who's trying to get it.
It's like, hold on, that's absolutely not true at any school.
Any school in our community,
they're not taking somebody's spots.
They're qualified first and foremost as a student.
And then they have this well-roundedness,
these leadership skills and these extra things that,
like Brent said, you can gain as part of the debate team.
You can gain as part of forensics.
There are so many ways that what we, you know,
here at Busta Pencils call essentials
and then and broader discourses are called extra curriculars.
But those programs that really round out, you know,
the three hours that we're learning in classroom.
So I love this conversation,
appreciate Brent being here and always love Bustin and Mythbust.
Man, Brent, what did Johnny Lane did on thick for you, man?
Well, well, Johnny, that was really well said.
You know, I think as you're talking discipline is one of the things also.
You have to be a good member of society.
You have to have discipline.
You talk to athletes now.
You talk to people who used to be athletes.
You know, many times we were actually more disciplined
and better stewards of our time and our focus quite frankly.
When we were in season, it's still, you know,
there was always the off-season training.
You have to be more disciplined.
You can't, you know, you can't push stuff off to tomorrow as well.
And I think that there are so many lessons to be learned here.
And I do appreciate you leaning with it.
You know, we're students first.
And I think it's really, it's not thinking very deeply.
Do you think that we're taking other people's spots?
Look, is there many other opportunities that we could have done
where our spot, what we thought was taken by somebody else?
It's failure, man.
And you go, okay, so that door show, I said,
what am I going to do?
Okay, you cried, got it, you move on.
So look, I love what you guys are saying.
I love that you also encourage the well-roundedness.
And that holds true.
It's not just academics.
Academics are important.
That's an important piece of it.
That's just one dimension.
I'd like to just back to the research here to kind of lay this out.
You know, the findings over, it's over 400,000 different athletes
that they looked at here, though, too.
And, you know, the conclusion is, is that, again,
taking away the myth that you take away spots from others,
but the reality is, is that, you know, having some connection to sports,
that there is a contributing factor that that seems to have some prediction
on later on life successes, whether they be financial,
whether they be leadership, you name it.
And so this idea that, you know,
we've, I've even heard people saying, you know, if school would be great,
if we just got rid of all of that extra nonsense.
And you're like, going, what?
Wait, and here it is, right of what, you know,
deep, really rich study that says, no,
actually student athletes tend to contribute more, do more,
spend more time with others.
I mean, and kind of putting it out there,
not even a myth, the fact is, is that it's a good thing to be a part
of an extracurricular activity when you're in schools,
because it does prepare you for adversity, for failure,
for working together, for understanding all of those things.
Even some of the things that you're learning in class,
you find out that they are sometimes applicable when you're playing in the field.
How that relates, Brent, I see a little agreement on that.
Absolutely. Look, Tim, it's human nature.
We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
Sports allows us that to happen.
Whether you're on the field, you're on the sidelines,
you're in the stands, whether you're in the gym,
helping people out, there's a number of ways people are part.
And you achieve things when I look back on my career in Johnny,
I'm sure you see both from personal experience,
and Tim from personal experience.
And athletes that you know, is when you're part of something bigger,
it enriches your life.
And being part of something bigger isn't unidimensional.
It's not only academics, not only athletics,
it's not only these other extracurriculars,
it's being well-rounded, and learning how to contribute to something big.
Sometimes, and also to be a leader,
you know how to know how to be a good follower.
And you learn these lessons.
In school, you learn through the extracurriculars.
They're the essential curriculars.
And so I think that it's an important part of life.
And I think if you look at education,
or going to school, it's just unidimensional,
you're cheapening the purpose, you're cheapening the experience.
Lupinaji.
Well, I can, I mean,
it couldn't say any better than Brent here.
And what you and Brent are talking about is, you know,
absolutely just thinking about education more broadly
as they're essentials.
And, you know, in sports, you know,
sometimes get that myth of like they're separate from.
But they're in every way part of it.
And I like that Brent talked about,
it's just opportunity for even the folks involved who aren't doing the athletics.
I mean, I think about managers.
I think about, you know, photographers.
I think about the, in these days and age,
the marketing, that social media students are doing,
that like every merchandise store is concessions.
It's just this real life application
and also joy in our culture to come together
and to experience that local economy,
that strengthen our community.
And, you know, Tim, we're big fans of it.
We got Brent here.
He's clearly a big fan of it.
But that help contribute to the success of these students
as they go out in life.
Right.
And apply these skills into their different professions.
So, love having that conversation here today.
It's always extra special.
Special.
Brent, thanks for being here with us.
Thank you.
Yeah, Brent.
Thank you so much for busting pencils.
And, you know what, you're not really a dumb jock.
And I don't know.
Well, now for our moment of Zen.
We all know individuals, most of them unsung, unrecognized,
who have often in the most modest ways spoken out
or acted on their beliefs for a more egalitarian,
more just peace loving society.
Toward off alienation and gloom,
it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes
of the past and to look around us
for the unnoticed heroes of the present.
Thanks for listening to busted pencils.
Don't forget you can tune in and listen to busted pencils
across all the civic media stations this Saturday at three o'clock.
If you miss that, you can download the podcast and listen.
We got a great episode about college teaching our AQ episode.
We'll keep going with that.
You better not be late Monday morning for home room.
That's right, home room episode drops on Monday busted pencils.
Thank you.