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You Can't Win Your Way to Culture: How Sports Organizations Mistake Winning for Purpose

At IntelliSport, we seek inspiration from those who share our perspective on how sports leaders should think and act. Today, we draw from researchers of college athletics, a philosopher who studies how social structures shape what we value, and arguably the greatest coach in college football history.A core belief that kick-started the founding of IntelliSport: there is too often a misalignment between purpose and values within sport. But for the sake of level setting the conversation, let’s first explore a few definitions, and the convergence and divergence of these ideas. Values in Sport: Values are the qualities, standards, and goods that athletes, coaches, and organizations hold as worthy of pursuit—both within the practice of sport itself and in the broader life context that surrounds it.Purpose in Sport: Purpose is the overarching reason or aim that gives meaning to one's engagement with sport—the answer to why an individual or organization participates at all.Purpose, then, is the meta-level orientation that determines how one relates to sport's values. Two athletes can share identical values (excellence, discipline, teamwork) while holding radically different purposes; one using sport primarily for external reward, while another finds intrinsic meaning in the practice itself.What we find worrisome at IntelliSport are leaders unaware of th