Crean 2012

I absolutely love Tom Crean.

He’s the reason I watch every game. He’s the reason I always have a seed of hope in my stomach, despite the pit of embarrassment that forms watching our consecutive turnovers. He’s the reason I still talk trash to my Purdue friends, regardless of our last-place standing in the Big Ten.

While watching Sunday’s game vs. Illinois, a clip of Crean’s pregame pep talk was shown. As his hoarse voice barked out words of inspiration, I felt pumped up enough to go and kick Bruce Weber’s butt myself.

 Crean barely touched on the troubling past; our guys clearly remember the Sampson era and the 11-game losing streak. Instead, he reminded the team of their winning capability. He concentrated on the future, the only thing they have under their control.

With the Illini up and the clock ticking away, the crowd started filing out. Yet there was Crean, clapping his hands together feverishly. Whether he was yelling encouragement or hugging Matt Roth, Crean never let the inevitable defeat damper his enthusiasm.

That loss will stay on the minds of our players for awhile. But Crean, as he has all year, will concentrate on an optimistic future to encourage them. He won’t spend his practices preaching about the last game’s lopsided statistics; he’ll spend the time correcting the problem while erasing the past.

President Obama should take a page from Crean’s playbook.

Despite running on a campaign of “hope,” Obama seems to have a thing for negativity.
Last week, Obama visited Elkhart, Ind., located in a county with a large unemployed population. If I were one of those unemployed residents, I know I’d want to hear something positive from the president.

Instead, Obama used Elkhart as a platform to tout disappointing economic figures and advertise his stimulus package. Just into his speech, he started rambling off the numbers, reminding the audience of Elkhart’s 15 percent unemployment rate. He of course treated the crowd to his typical game plan: Find random unemployed American, have him describe his struggles, then turn to the crowd and say, “This is you.”

Guess what, Mr. President? Those people already knew all that.

Until our president stops using every opportunity to rehash the figures of our staggering economy, we will struggle to pull out of the recession. Consumers aren’t any more enticed to spend their money after they hear yet another rendition of the country’s decline from the guy who promised to fix it.

Obama is repeatedly making the country’s downfall a political wedge, which probably won’t fix the problems anyway. Apparently he missed the memo that the negative advertising usually ends after you take office.

Tom Crean has managed to maintain Bloomington’s basketball passion by running a coaching campaign based solely on optimism. How could we expect our team to win if Crean spent his time sitting on the bench, using time-outs to reminisce about last half’s dismal free-throw percentage? We couldn’t.

It’s time Obama got off the bench and started clapping, too.