The Athletic Director of George Mason University, Tom O’Connor, spoke on Thursday at Mason about the student-athletes at Mason.  He did not just talk about the success of the athletes on the field, but also on developing them into successful citizens off the field.

O’Connor emphasized three key points in reference to the Athletic Department’s philosophy on sports: quality & balance; sportsmanship; and fun.

It seems as if character often gets overlooked when people are evaluating athletes and coaches.  It is more rare to find a Tim Tebow than to find a Manny Ramirez.  More often than not teams will look to hire, draft, or recruit coaches and players merely based on what they can do on the field with little regard for what they can do off the field.

It is reasons like that which make me admire so much people like Tebow, Tony Dungy, or Joe Gibbs.  People like them haven’t just looked for the easy way to the top, but rather they have done it the right way, and in the process have affected the lives of others.

O’Connor said that this is what Mason athletics is striving to do.

“We would rather have a coach or administrator lose a game the right way,” O’Connor said, “than win doing it the wrong way.”

When you consider that the collective GPA of the student-athletes is higher than the collective GPA for non-athletes, it becomes easy to see that Mason is striving not just to say the right things, but to do them as well.

According to O’Connor, it is more important to teach the student-athletes to be good citizens than just good athletes.

Consider that Jim Calhoun and the University of Connecticut just won the national title for men’s basketball, and that Calhoun has already been suspended for a series of games next year for recruiting violations, and you can understand why it is a breath of fresh air to see a program that has had success in doing it the right way.