I did not know this....
He Helped Elect a President; Now Comes a Harder Job
CORVALLIS, Ore. — With a hint of 5 o’clock shadow and small bags under his eyes, Oregon State Coach Craig Robinson took the basketball court on Wednesday to start a campaign that is nearly as daunting as the one he just helped to complete.
For the past 20 months, Robinson assisted his brother-in-law Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency. Robinson stumped in Iowa, gave speeches in Washington State and did interviews about his childhood on Chicago’s South Side with his younger sister, Michelle, who is married to Obama.
All that work culminated in one magical Tuesday for Robinson and his family as they ate dinner at the Obamas’ house on election night and later exchanged congratulatory hugs onstage at Grant Park in Chicago.
“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t been able to process it yet,” Robinson said less than 24 hours later as he sat on the bleachers at Gill Coliseum after practice. “It’s wild. I don’t know what to say.”
Now that the Obamas are preparing to enter the White House and Robinson can devote all his energy to his first season at Oregon State, Robinson and the president-elect can debate about whose task is tougher.
“Before this whole economy thing, I would have said that we had a bigger rebuilding job,” Robinson said of Oregon State. “But this economy thing puts him over the top, hands down. He’s got the economy, and you can throw in the housing crisis and the war. He’s got more on his plate than I do.”
Robinson installed the Princeton-style offense that he used to lead Brown to a team-record 19 victories last season. He also brought many of the themes prevalent in the Obama campaign: change, hope and reform.
Robinson’s players at Brown said he went out of his way to separate politics and basketball. He would walk a block from his office on Hope Street and duck into the Blue State Coffee shop to talk politics. (Jesse Agel, Brown’s new coach, said he would send Robinson a pound of Blue State Coffee, with its “drink liberally” slogan, to congratulate him.)
Although Robinson was happy to discuss politics with anyone who asked, he would never start the conversation. But as Robinson went from coaching in the Ivy League to coaching in the Pac-10 and his brother-in-law went from representing Illinois in the Senate to being elected the nation’s 44th president, those discussions are becoming harder to avoid.
He called his connections the “white elephant” in the room, and his Pac-10 rivals are wondering just how much his ties to Obama will help him in recruiting. Robinson said that if it helped him land a recruit, he would be the first one to say so.
“I want my players to know that I’m recruiting them to play basketball at Oregon State,” Robinson said, “and to the extent that my network can help them after college, if you come play for me, you’re part of my network. I think people can figure that out without me hitting them over the head with it.”
Robinson has received commitments from two highly regarded high school seniors: shooting guard Roberto Nelson and center Joe Burton.
Nelson, considered one of the country’s top 75 recruits, chose the Beavers over perennial powers like U.C.L.A., Ohio State, Florida and Southern California. Burton had looks from Tennessee, Florida and Marquette.
Nelson’s outgoing cellphone voice mail message showed that Robinson’s political connections did not hurt. The message included the passage: “I’m probably watching the presidential election. You know my man Barack Obama over here taking it to John McCain.”
But Robinson offers more to recruits, as his story is one of the most fascinating of any college basketball coach. After graduating from Princeton, where he played for Pete Carril and was twice named the Ivy League player of the year, Robinson wanted to coach.
Carril laughed as he recalled telling him that coaching would waste Robinson’s talents. Instead, he went to graduate school and succeeded in the financial world, including spending seven years as a vice president at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
But the six-bedroom house, high-six-figure salary and luxurious vacations lost their appeal, and Robinson decided nine years ago while in a cab in Chicago to take an assistant’s job on Bill Carmody’s staff at Northwestern. He made a tenth of his previous salary, but said he felt whole again.
That job eventually led Robinson to Brown, where in two seasons he overhauled the program with his work ethic, tough love and relentless demands on his players. He put a dictionary in the locker room for players to look up the words he used — a tradition that has continued at Oregon State, where the word guile has become a buzzword — and adopted a few campaign catchphrases of his own. At Brown’s practice on Monday night, a few Bears players wore T-shirts with the slogans “Make Shots” and “Cut Hard.”
“He left us the confidence to go into any gym and not just compete, but to win,” said Agel, an assistant to Robinson for two seasons. “He did that by giving us his toughness and competitiveness, and his will to get it done. He’s going to do that to Oregon State. He’s going to have them, in no time, believing that they can go into any Pac-10 arena and come out with a victory.”
The Brown senior Chris Skrelja assessed Robinson’s impact this way: “The name Brown means a lot more than it did four years ago. Four years ago, it was at best a midlevel Ivy League school.”
Oregon State has a long way to go to reach the middle of the Pac-10 pack. Robinson found a group ready to listen after it endured a 6-25 record last season. Guard Josh Tarver said that a loss to Division II Alaska-Fairbanks in November set the tone for the season, as players screamed at coaches in the locker room and coaches screamed at players.
“It was a rough year,” Tarver said. “It was chaos.”
Seemingly craving some discipline, the players set up voluntary 6 a.m. weight-lifting sessions this summer after they found out about Robinson’s 5:30 a.m. practices. When a freshman arrived late for lifting, the entire team ran sprints as punishment to teach accountability. The same group punishments apply when a player shows up late for tutoring.
“This is about the rest of their life,” Robinson said. “Most of these guys are not going to be pros, but they’re going to have to get up and go to work and be on time and be accountable.”
That message has started to sink in. No one was late for 5:30 a.m. practice in the first three weeks.
“We’re too scared to see what he’d do,” the sophomore forward Omari Johnson said with a laugh. “Way too scared.”
Obama said Robinson’s discipline and diligence enhanced his presidential campaign.
“Craig doesn’t profess to know the specifics of politics the way he knows the X’s and O’s of basketball,” Obama said in a statement last week. “But I think what he does understand is the need to wake up every morning doing your best and having a positive attitude. And him communicating that to me was always very helpful.”
In a fitting twist, Oregon State’s first regular-season game under Robinson is Friday at Howard University in Washington, the future home of the Obamas. Robinson joked that he wished he had been clever enough to create that matchup.
Pac-10 teams rarely play on the road against a lesser team like Howard. But the previous staff had scheduled it for the junior Calvin Hampton, who is from Maryland.
“There’s going to be so much pressure on them,” Robinson said of his players and the expected circuslike atmosphere surrounding the game. “But you know what? If you’re going to win games on the road in the Pac-10, then you have to win these kinds of games. We might as well just do it.”
Now that the pressure of the election is off, Robinson’s job is to bring change to Oregon State. His campaign kicks off Friday.
He Helped Elect a President; Now Comes a Harder Job
CORVALLIS, Ore. — With a hint of 5 o’clock shadow and small bags under his eyes, Oregon State Coach Craig Robinson took the basketball court on Wednesday to start a campaign that is nearly as daunting as the one he just helped to complete.
For the past 20 months, Robinson assisted his brother-in-law Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency. Robinson stumped in Iowa, gave speeches in Washington State and did interviews about his childhood on Chicago’s South Side with his younger sister, Michelle, who is married to Obama.
All that work culminated in one magical Tuesday for Robinson and his family as they ate dinner at the Obamas’ house on election night and later exchanged congratulatory hugs onstage at Grant Park in Chicago.
“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t been able to process it yet,” Robinson said less than 24 hours later as he sat on the bleachers at Gill Coliseum after practice. “It’s wild. I don’t know what to say.”
Now that the Obamas are preparing to enter the White House and Robinson can devote all his energy to his first season at Oregon State, Robinson and the president-elect can debate about whose task is tougher.
“Before this whole economy thing, I would have said that we had a bigger rebuilding job,” Robinson said of Oregon State. “But this economy thing puts him over the top, hands down. He’s got the economy, and you can throw in the housing crisis and the war. He’s got more on his plate than I do.”
Robinson installed the Princeton-style offense that he used to lead Brown to a team-record 19 victories last season. He also brought many of the themes prevalent in the Obama campaign: change, hope and reform.
Robinson’s players at Brown said he went out of his way to separate politics and basketball. He would walk a block from his office on Hope Street and duck into the Blue State Coffee shop to talk politics. (Jesse Agel, Brown’s new coach, said he would send Robinson a pound of Blue State Coffee, with its “drink liberally” slogan, to congratulate him.)
Although Robinson was happy to discuss politics with anyone who asked, he would never start the conversation. But as Robinson went from coaching in the Ivy League to coaching in the Pac-10 and his brother-in-law went from representing Illinois in the Senate to being elected the nation’s 44th president, those discussions are becoming harder to avoid.
He called his connections the “white elephant” in the room, and his Pac-10 rivals are wondering just how much his ties to Obama will help him in recruiting. Robinson said that if it helped him land a recruit, he would be the first one to say so.
“I want my players to know that I’m recruiting them to play basketball at Oregon State,” Robinson said, “and to the extent that my network can help them after college, if you come play for me, you’re part of my network. I think people can figure that out without me hitting them over the head with it.”
Robinson has received commitments from two highly regarded high school seniors: shooting guard Roberto Nelson and center Joe Burton.
Nelson, considered one of the country’s top 75 recruits, chose the Beavers over perennial powers like U.C.L.A., Ohio State, Florida and Southern California. Burton had looks from Tennessee, Florida and Marquette.
Nelson’s outgoing cellphone voice mail message showed that Robinson’s political connections did not hurt. The message included the passage: “I’m probably watching the presidential election. You know my man Barack Obama over here taking it to John McCain.”
But Robinson offers more to recruits, as his story is one of the most fascinating of any college basketball coach. After graduating from Princeton, where he played for Pete Carril and was twice named the Ivy League player of the year, Robinson wanted to coach.
Carril laughed as he recalled telling him that coaching would waste Robinson’s talents. Instead, he went to graduate school and succeeded in the financial world, including spending seven years as a vice president at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
But the six-bedroom house, high-six-figure salary and luxurious vacations lost their appeal, and Robinson decided nine years ago while in a cab in Chicago to take an assistant’s job on Bill Carmody’s staff at Northwestern. He made a tenth of his previous salary, but said he felt whole again.
That job eventually led Robinson to Brown, where in two seasons he overhauled the program with his work ethic, tough love and relentless demands on his players. He put a dictionary in the locker room for players to look up the words he used — a tradition that has continued at Oregon State, where the word guile has become a buzzword — and adopted a few campaign catchphrases of his own. At Brown’s practice on Monday night, a few Bears players wore T-shirts with the slogans “Make Shots” and “Cut Hard.”
“He left us the confidence to go into any gym and not just compete, but to win,” said Agel, an assistant to Robinson for two seasons. “He did that by giving us his toughness and competitiveness, and his will to get it done. He’s going to do that to Oregon State. He’s going to have them, in no time, believing that they can go into any Pac-10 arena and come out with a victory.”
The Brown senior Chris Skrelja assessed Robinson’s impact this way: “The name Brown means a lot more than it did four years ago. Four years ago, it was at best a midlevel Ivy League school.”
Oregon State has a long way to go to reach the middle of the Pac-10 pack. Robinson found a group ready to listen after it endured a 6-25 record last season. Guard Josh Tarver said that a loss to Division II Alaska-Fairbanks in November set the tone for the season, as players screamed at coaches in the locker room and coaches screamed at players.
“It was a rough year,” Tarver said. “It was chaos.”
Seemingly craving some discipline, the players set up voluntary 6 a.m. weight-lifting sessions this summer after they found out about Robinson’s 5:30 a.m. practices. When a freshman arrived late for lifting, the entire team ran sprints as punishment to teach accountability. The same group punishments apply when a player shows up late for tutoring.
“This is about the rest of their life,” Robinson said. “Most of these guys are not going to be pros, but they’re going to have to get up and go to work and be on time and be accountable.”
That message has started to sink in. No one was late for 5:30 a.m. practice in the first three weeks.
“We’re too scared to see what he’d do,” the sophomore forward Omari Johnson said with a laugh. “Way too scared.”
Obama said Robinson’s discipline and diligence enhanced his presidential campaign.
“Craig doesn’t profess to know the specifics of politics the way he knows the X’s and O’s of basketball,” Obama said in a statement last week. “But I think what he does understand is the need to wake up every morning doing your best and having a positive attitude. And him communicating that to me was always very helpful.”
In a fitting twist, Oregon State’s first regular-season game under Robinson is Friday at Howard University in Washington, the future home of the Obamas. Robinson joked that he wished he had been clever enough to create that matchup.
Pac-10 teams rarely play on the road against a lesser team like Howard. But the previous staff had scheduled it for the junior Calvin Hampton, who is from Maryland.
“There’s going to be so much pressure on them,” Robinson said of his players and the expected circuslike atmosphere surrounding the game. “But you know what? If you’re going to win games on the road in the Pac-10, then you have to win these kinds of games. We might as well just do it.”
Now that the pressure of the election is off, Robinson’s job is to bring change to Oregon State. His campaign kicks off Friday.
