Going forward, it will be interesting to
see whether Roy Williams inaugurates a new
era of stability in which the different
values fans associated with Tar Heels basketball
come into less tension with one another:
if he does things "the right way"
AND wins and wins pretty big, those tensions
should subside; loyalty to the institution,
loyalty to the coach, loyalty to an ethic
would not conflict with one another nor
with the desire to derive pleasure from
wins and losses. Most Tar Heels fans hope
and assume that will be the case, but it
remains to be seen–in the cutthroat
world of today's recruiting and with the
difficulty of retaining stars before they
go to the NBA, it is substantially harder
to do things "the right way" and
be as consistent on the court as Tar Heels
is accustomed to being. And if Williams
does not succeed at a high level both on
and off the court, then those tensions will
flare up again--just as they will in any
collegiate situation in which fans and administrators
must make value-driven choices about whether
to support a coach who does well off the
court but struggles on it–or conversely,
whether to support a coach who does fine
on the court but creates problems off of
it.
What makes the Tar Heels example interesting
and unusual is that here is a case where
many fans and most in the university community
really do care about how players are treated,
and aren't willing to adopt a win at all
costs approach. That situation inevitably
creates value conflicts even when things
go well, and full blown controversies when
they do not. In many ways, however, these
occasional controversies are simply the
price of success, on and off the court:
For the reason that people feel so passionately
about Tar Heels basketball and have so much
invested in it is directly connected to
this fact: that Tar Heels basketball for
so many years exemplified an ideal of what
college sports can be at its best.
