Coach Wooden
John Wooden, famous former coach of the UCLA men's basketball team, recently turned 98. Here are two fine stories about him.
For instance, he turned 98 two weeks ago, but did you know he should've been dead at 35? During World War II, he was scheduled for a tour of duty in the South Pacific on the USS Franklin when an emergency appendectomy put him in the infirmary. The Franklin left without him. It was eventually hit by a kamikaze, killing 724 crewmembers. Much the same happened years later, when your great-grandpa didn't take a flight from Atlanta to Raleigh that he had a seat on. That plane went down. Everybody died.
"Pure, blind luck," Wooden says, holding on to the arms of his wheelchair. "I don't believe in fate."
Wooden lives in a modest condo that is covered in books, pictures, artifacts and copies of his Pyramid of Success, which he still signs for fans. Up until last year he drove a 1989 Ford Taurus, which was sold last week on eBay for $5,000. And he has never owned a cell phone, fax machine or computer, although getting a hold of him isn't difficult; his number is listed.
"Here's the greatest coach who ever lived and the most money he ever made at UCLA was $32,500," says [Dale] Brown. "I recently asked how he was doing and he said, 'I'm 98 and I've made a decision. I'm going to live to be a 100.' So I asked, 'How did you make that coach?' He said, 'I looked at my driver's license and I have two years left, I'm not going to let that money go to waste."
He may have been a great coach, but did he understand "sunk costs"?
Posted by: EclectEcon | November 11, 2008 at 07:58 AM