First Brother-In-Law to Coach College Hoops
With just 10 measly words, Craig Robinson was able to get a crowd of 45,000 people to go crazier than Michael Jackson at a Boy Scouts meeting.
“I’m Craig Robinson, and Michelle Obama is my little sister,” he echoed throughout Denver’s Pepsi Center during the Democratic National Convention in August.
You see, Robinson is the new Head Coach of the Oregon State Beavers men’s basketball team, and a guy who just so happens to be Barack Obama’s brother-in-law; talk about luck.
“Barack is committed to making this American dream a possibility for all Americans,” Robinson exclaimed to Obama supporters who were packed into the arena like sardines.
But he wasn’t there to simply talk politics; he also gave a shout out to his basketball team. “Today, I’m proud to be the coach of the Oregon State men’s basketball team. Go Beavers,” Robinson told the crowd.
As a former two-time Ivy-League player of the year at Princeton, Robinson already knows a little something about leadership and the limelight. After graduating from school, Robinson became a bond trader in Chicago - and a good one at that. And although he was making a lot of money and living comfortably, something was missing, something that he loved. And hey, why would you give up a multi-million dollar job when you can be an assistant coach for a perennial loser?
“I’d much rather be in the gym having practice and talking hoops,” he has said.
I’m not quite sure if there is “practice” at Northwestern, so much as it’s college athletes throwing brick after brick at the rim, but hey, whatever works, right? So even though the Wildcats of Northwestern are about as competitive as girls playing hopscotch, he was able to get back into the game as their assistant coach. After a couple of years and some success, he was offered a head coaching position. It wasn’t Duke or North Carolina or even the Kennesaw State Owls; Robinson got a job back in his old stomping grounds - the nerdy Ivy League. Now, most people identify Brown with geeks and bookworms and not athletic domination, but Robinson turned it around long enough to get another head coaching offer.
And even though the Beavers have been about as good as chocolate-covered-tuna-fish recently, the opportunity in Corvallis, Oregon was just too good to pass up.
“They didn’t win a game [in the Pac-10], and some people would look at that and go, ‘Wow, I’ll be inheriting a real challenge,’” Michelle Obama recently said. “Craig sees it as a real opportunity. His view was: I really can start from scratch; I can build a program because the only place to go is up.”
And so there he was, addressing the convention, addressing the nation and addressing both current and future recruits. A lot of people might get nervous and worry about what people would say or think. Robinson, however, stood up and endorsed his sister and her husband as the change that America so desperately needs. Now that Obama has been officially elected, it just may be because of what Robinson had to say that night - and he certainly has made his mark on American politics.
And while the head coaching job at Oregon State is special, First Brother-In-Law has a nice ring to it too.
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under College Basketball, College Conferences, Race and Sports, Sports News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
