“Honesty’s the best policy.”
Benjamin Franklin

The NCAA now grabs America’s sports’ headlines with March Madness. We’re down to the Final Four and a week away from the national championship game. While the NCAA captures the attention of avid and casual basketball fans alike, another national collegiate organization is focusing significant energy on building America’s Champions of Character. That organization is the NAIA, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.

Launched in 2000, the NAIA’s Champions of Character program addresses character issues more comprehensively than any other national program for youth. Currently, the program reaches hundreds of thousands of students on nearly 300 college and university campuses in North America and extends into their surrounding communities. The Champions of Character program is an educational outreach initiative that emphasizes the tenets of character not only for college students, but for younger students, coaches and parents in our communities.

Championship teams are defined by the four cornerstones: individual talent, outstanding team play, stellar defense, and never-say-die-persistence. The NAIA teaches that champions of character are defined by five core values: respect, responsibility, integrity, servant leadership and sportsmanship.

For me, the NAIA’s definition of integrity is their values heart. It offers a succinct capstone on the FINISH LINE’S month-long focus on honesty. Integrity is expressed as: Keep commitments and conduct honest behavior.

The character mentor who wears the name of dad, mom, coach, teacher, or community leader takes intensely passionate interest in putting a youngster onto life’s daily court using skills to play the game of life with one conspicuous and consistent game face: Honesty’s the best policy.

It’s all too easy to gloss over these words rather than digging deeply for their meaning. Is it possible that 'Ol Ben, the Philadelphia Sage, understood that honesty requires confronting personal doubts, demanding one’s personal game of life be played with one’s limitations while giving each day’s court play credible, consistent and conscientious attention to honesty’s details?

The virtue-seeking Franklin never experienced throwing a round ball through a suspended basket, but he sure worked at honesty’s four skills: straight-shooting words; decisive actions; truthful adjustments to mistakes; and vigilant mental preparation in readiness to shoot an honesty game winner regardless of the consequences.

I anticipate the excitement of next Monday’s NCAA national basketball championship game. But I am really thrilled by the NAIA commitment to teach America’s kids how to become tomorrow’s Champions of Character.