Wining at any cost - part II

Winning at any cost - part II

Yesterday we looked at the concept of winning at any cost.  

The concept says “This team / this company / this person - will do ANYTHING to win.”  This is not a new concept. It is built on the foundation of overt competitiveness, greed, extreme ego and more.  

In sports, over the years some athletes did ‘anything’ to win.  Take professional cycling, where some athletes went to great lengths to win the Tour de France with performance-enhancing drugs, even blood transfusions. In other sports, athletes are given steroids to build their strength or endurance.  

We see this in other areas other than sports.  In the past year, there were those who paid college recruiters in lessor sports to get ‘scholarships’ to prestigious universities.  So, I want my child to attend Yale? I would bride the water polo coach from Yale to get my son on the team and bypass the normal admission process.  I have heard in the academic world of cheating on tests in various ways. With technology, cheating can happen in many ways (after all Google ‘knows’ everything doesn’t it?)

College endowments can also be a factor in ‘fairness’.  Some of the major schools (like Harvard and Yale) have huge endowments and can recruit the top students from around the country and world to enter their universities.  Success breeds success there - as top students from prestigious universities go on to top jobs - and as these top students making top money donate more funds back to their alma maters, allowing those universities to attract additional top students (and top professors).  

Money talks - and the adage “the rich get rich and the poor get poorer” seems to work in almost all fields.  

Even in farming, the farmers with the best land can buy the best equipment, can install the best sprinkling systems, and pay the water bills.  

Life isn’t fair.  Should we handicap the best to provide opportunities for others?  

Many years ago, I read Ayn Rand’s major books - The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.  Particularly Atlas Shrugged suggested handicapping the successful to pay for the others.  While it has been years since I read the book, there was legislation about “anti-dog-eat-dog” - where the competition was toned down in order to help the underdogs compete (of which Ayn Rand opposed this).  The concept says that success causes the opposition to improve. A few years back, the University of Connecticut Women’s basketball team was always number 1.  

Wikipedia notes: “The UConn Huskies are the most successful women's basketball program in the nation, having won a record 11 NCAA Division I National Championships and a women's record four in a row, from 2013 through 2016, plus over 40 conference regular season and tournament championships.”

This year at this time, the UConn women’s basketball team is ranked sixth.  Other teams and other coaches have studied UConn’s success and built strong teams.  And, in the big scheme of things, it has caused American Women’s basketball to be stronger.  

Following yesterday’s thought:  Does competition build a stronger product across the field?  (Provided that the competition is fair and is not cheating). Or (again), should successful teams, programs, companies, be handicapped to achieve more balance?

Still an interesting discussion!!!

What do you think?

Karen