School Spirit That Leads to a Cult

Went to the Notre Dame vs Michigan game yesterday.  A good friend of mine went to Notre Dame Law and had tickets.   I love to go to college campuses.  Always have.  It’s always interesting to me and sometimes campuses say a lot about the culture that comes out of the university.  Sometimes, it doesn’t.

For example, if you go to Emory in Atlanta, there are a lot of signals that Coke put a lot of money in that school. The building rock was quarried nearby.  At Davidson, the buildings are very traditional looking and it’s a traditional liberal arts undergraduate experience.  Classic college.

Love or hate them, many schools spawn a cult among their alums.  Both Michigan and Notre Dame are like that.  I am not using the word “cult” in a derogative sense.  I am thinking about it in a positive sense.

Usually, to create a community like I am thinking about there is some rite of passage or a series of rites of passage.  ND has the advantage of a religious rite of passage along with the fact a lot of students went to a Catholic grade/high school with their own rites of passage.

One of the more interesting things I saw walking around was the amount of mixed marriages and mixed relationships I saw.  One person with a Michigan shirt walking hand in hand with a Notre Dame partner. Notre Dame, like other schools founded by a religious order, have a leg up on creating a cult like community.  Since ND is Catholic, most of the students are Catholic.  Heck, in the old days ND and the Catholic League of Chicago had a pipeline for football recruiting.

ND does a lot to foster the community outside of religion while the students are in school.  One of the things that is pretty neat is the amount of school spirit that surrounds the football team.  Students create t-shirts where the profits go to a charity the entire school can get behind.  They stand the entire game like service academy cadets do.  They have carried over the “Play like a Champion Today” ethos that encompasses the football team and you see banners in the innovation center that say, “Innovate like a Champion Today”.  That’s a good idea.

Back when I was growing up, it wasn’t that tough to get into Notre Dame.  Today, it’s an elite school with an international presence.  It shows how if you choose to change your culture you can do it.  It takes planning, time and effort.

Every time you visit a college on a tour, they will tout their alumni network.  However, few colleges really do have a productive network.  I know for a fact Notre Dame does and it’s a strong reason to go there.  Michigan has a very good network post grad too, but fosters it in different ways.  There is a lot of “Bo” in the Michigan ethos.

For startups, I think how you can create a community around what you are doing can be fruitful if you  execute on it correctly.  Apple users are cult like.  Bloomberg users are cult like.  Having community makes your business stickier.

By the way, Michigan is not that good.  I don’t think they should be in the top 20.  Very very over rated this year.