George L. Cross was a man ahead of his time.
Sometime in the early 1950s, Cross, the president of the University of Oklahoma, went before the state appropriations committee to ask for an increase in the school’s budget. After an hour-long presentation lacking any sympathetic ears, Cross found the sole argument that moved the committee: “We want to build a university our football team can be proud of.”
It was intended as a sarcastic quip, but Cross understood the pervasiveness of that thinking better than anyone and certainly better than the myriad people who adopted the position sans irony.