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John Kelly

Professor Ferrara

Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition Section 14

April 7, 2023

The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding John Wooden

One of the most famous college basketball coaches to ever coach tells us the difference

between winning and succeeding through real-life examples in his own life. John Wooden was

not only a great coach, but he was a great player too. He played at Purdue University where he

was three-time All-American, and he was also awarded the Big Ten Medal of Honor for being a

great athlete and a student. Although he was a great player, most people know him for being a

spectacular coach at UCLA because he dominated the NCAA. He won ten National

Championships in a twelve-year span as head coach. His UCLA team currently holds the NCAA

record for winning a consecutive eighty-eight games. Wooden definitely knows what it’s like to

win as a head coach and he uses examples from his own life to redefine the difference between

winning and succeeding.

Wooden was motivated by the parents at a high school in South Bend, Indiana, because

he was an English teacher there and he was distraught by the way parents would be expecting

their kids to get an A or B. If their child didn’t receive a “good” grade they would make the

teacher and the student feel like they failed. Wooden didn’t agree with this, and he wanted to find

a way to persuade others and come up with his own definition of success. Another influencer was

Wooden’s dad who taught him and his brothers that they should never try to act above someone

else. He told them that they should only worry about the things they can control and always learn
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from others. After keeping his father’s thoughts in his head, he found a verse that read, “At God's

footstool to confess, a poor soul knelt, and bowed his head. 'I failed!' he cried.

The Master said, 'Thou didst thy best, that is success” (Wooden 2:44-50). Using his experiences

from his teacher, his father, and this verse he was able to create his own definition of success

which is, “Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort

to do the best of which you're capable” (Wooden 2:59-3:02). The author’s purpose is to make

people think that if you know you put your best foot forward and you put in the most possible

effort you could, then you were successful. He wants people to think about their character and

who they really are. Wooden wanted his younger students to think about their character and how

their character is the most important thing.

I believe that the main audience that Wooden was trying to get attention from was

student-athletes because his motivation was from them, and his profession was working with

student-athletes. He wants student-athletes to know that their character is the most important

thing about them and that if they put their best effort into a specific task but didn’t get the result

they were looking for, they were still successful. The main reason why Wooden created this text

was because he was sick of seeing students earn C’s and feeling like they failed even though they

did put a lot of effort into that particular assignment. He created a pyramid with many different

things that helped him lead up to his definition of success, and he believed that this helped him

become a better teacher for his students to feel more comfortable in the classroom. Wooden

would love to see his athletes at UCLA succeed because during the last day of practice before a

game, he would often go sit up in the stands so that the players could put in full effort, and he

would love to see the satisfaction on their faces.

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Wooden is trying to argue that success and winning are different because success in

Wooden’s mind is if you think that you put as much effort as you possibly could into something

then you succeeded. Winning in Wooden’s mind is a reputation and what people think you

should be. He is trying to tell us that your character is more important than how you are looked at

because your character is who you really are and that’s something that you have control over.

Ethos is used in this speech because John Wooden is not only a famous basketball player

and coach, but he is also a mentor for others. He is a very trustworthy source because I believe

that his resume sums up that this man knows what he is talking about. He has sent many players

to the NBA and those who didn’t make the NBA have great jobs and use the lessons that Wooden

had taught them. He won eighty-eight consecutive basketball games and ten National

Championships not just because of how good his players were, but because of how he taught his

players to act with poise and class. Wooden represents himself as a man of integrity because he is

honest with himself and he has taught anyone that has gone through the UCLA program with

him as head coach to treat yourself, your teammates, and your opponents with respect.

Pathos is used in this speech because Wooden wants his audience to feel better about

themselves and even if they didn’t win they still put their best foot forward which meant they put

in their best effort. He wants people to realize that success is about how you feel about yourself

and how much effort you feel that you put into something. I see Wooden appealing to the

audience’s values and beliefs by trying to show students that if they put their best effort into an

assignment and don’t get the grade they were looking for, they should still feel like they were

successful. Wooden is trying to invoke a self-satisfaction emotional response because if you

know that you put a lot of effort in then you will feel that satisfaction. Most of the time if you put

in the most amount of effort possible you will often see the results that you are looking for.
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Logos is used in this speech because Wooden has a lot of supporting arguments behind

his philosophy of the difference between winning and succeeding. A supporting argument that

Wooden uses in his speech is from a former Umpire who wrote “The Road Ahead, or the Road

Behind.” This is a quote that really stuck out to me, and what I think sums up Wooden’s

argument is “the shining trophies on our shelves can never win tomorrow's game. You and I

know deeper down, there's always a chance to win the crown. But when we fail to give our best,

we simply haven't met the test” (Wooden 10:56-59). Wooden definitely has a lot of shining

trophies on his wall, but he doesn’t care about that because he only cares about the future. He

thinks that if you don’t give your best then you aren’t going to succeed or “meet the test.”

I would characterize the style and tone of this speech as formal because Wooden is trying

to teach us a lesson and even though he is cracking some jokes throughout his speech he is still

being very serious. He is trying to teach us life lessons and he uses proper English throughout the

whole speech. The target audience would find this speech appealing because one of the main

goals of the speech is to get the audience to think the way that he is thinking. I don’t think that

there are any logical fallacies because Wooden is a trustworthy person with a long history of

teaching student-athletes how to act and be successful not only on the court but off the court as

well. His definition of success is to encourage not just young student athletes to put in the most

effort they can, but everyone in the world too. It’s not all about winning and it’s not about what

people see you as. It’s about your character and who you are as a person.
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Works Cited

Wooden, John. “The Difference between Winning and Succeeding.” John Wooden: The

Difference between Winning and Succeeding | TED Talk,

www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_the_difference_between_winning_and_succeeding?language=

en.

Rick Lindquist. “Notes on the Difference between Winning and Succeeding by John Wooden via

Ted.” Rick Lindquist, Rick Lindquist, 5 May 2021,

www.ricklindquist.com/notes/the-difference-between-winning-and-succeeding-by-john-wooden.