College athletics is a business a multimillion dollar business, he says, but we need to make sure it doesn t exist solely as a business and get so far away from what it s really about. College athletics is a great teaching vehicle at Duke, we take the theory from the classroom and combine it with the reality on the court.
Players learn to deal with success and failure as a team.
While he doesn t believe the tail should wag the dog, Krzyzewski concedes that, in many ways, he functions like a CEO of a different sort of company. In his position, you have to pay attention and make sure that the business is running well, so that you can operate an exceptional program, he says. His effective communication and marketing skills garnered him an additional title in 1998 assistant to the athletic director. I m working a lot with the marketing, development, and strategy behind our program, and I try to come up with new ideas for fundraising, he says. At the same time, I m keeping the product basketball at a very high level.