When George Tinsley was a freshman at Kentucky Wesleyan College in 1967, his team won the NCAA Men’s Division II Basketball Championship. A freshman starter, he and his team were invited on a once-in-a-lifetime trip as ambassadors of basketball, playing against club teams in Europe and Africa. The trip changed his life on several levels: (1) As an African-American growing up in Smoketown, an innercity neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky, touring Africa during the rise of the Black Power movement in the U.S. gave him a newfound appreciation of the opportunities offered by the United States; (2) being in the limelight increased his self-esteem and diminished the sting of being a poor boy growing up on food stamps and subsidized school lunches, wearing hand-me downs; (3) he discovered the woman he thought was his mother was actually the elderly baby sitter his mother had left him with when he was 7 months old and had never returned to pick up.

“For an 18 year old that was traumatic,” he says. Tinsley needed his birth certificate for a passport, which was when he discovered his birthday was different. His birth name was George William Penebaker, but he adopted the last name of Willie Tinsley, the 65-year-old, one-legged woman who raised him when his mother
disappeared. George lived with Willie in one room in transient housing, until she became ill, and they moved in with her grown son and his family. Timing is everything; and truth is easier to deal with when you’re successful, he adds. He waited until years later, after he was married and playing ball professionally, to look for his biological parents. Apparently, forgiveness is easier when you’re successful, also.

Sports were Tinsley’s salvation, along with the Green Street Baptist Church. He wasn’t a particularly dedicated student—no one questioned a “C” versus an “A” on his report card, he says—but that changed
once he went to college. And so did his love of sports. “I loved track best,” he says, “But basketball loved me. I had more success at basketball.” Being 6-foot-5 also helped. When Tinsley was applying to colleges,
Division I schools had an unwritten quota of black athletes they would accept. “If they recruited one, they’d recruit two so they could room together,” he says.

Tinsley was drafted out of college into the pros. At the time, the moreestablished NBA was being challenged by an upstart league, the American Basketball Association. It was more difficult to get into the NBA, but the ABA was offering more money, he says. His first contract was for $25,000 with a $10,000 signing bonus. A
fortune at the time.

The ABA was known for its flashy-style of play, using a red, white and blue ball instead of the standard orange one. The two leagues merged in 1976. “I wasn’t a star,” he admits, “but just saying you played (opens doors). They (business people) want to talk sports, but you take them where you want to go.” Ironically, he left the ABA’s Kentucky Colonels after three years and went to work for another Kentucky Colonel, KFC’s Col. Sanders, who he describes as a “colorful character.”

Tinsley worked as a trainer for around eight years, before like a lot of corporate employees who gives others the tools to be rich, he wanted to be a franchisee himself. He was awarded a restaurant in Florida, which celebrated its grand opening with seemingly never-ending, long lines of people hungry for fried chicken and curious to see the first black ownership of a KFC in their area. He remembers thinking at the time:

“When are they going to stop coming?” A sentiment many KFC owners would love to be thinking in today’s economy. “After my first KFC, it was off to the races. I built two, then three, bought and sold and then I started diversifying,” Tinsley says. His other franchise is T.G.I. Friday’s, and he has foodservice license agreements with a host of concepts, including Starbucks, Quiznos, Burger King, Home Team Sports Bar and Budweiser Brew House. In all, there are some 16 different brands for which he holds licenses. Locations include sought-after airport sites, and he owns some with partners, some on his own. Diversifying isn’t as daunting as it seems. “Franchise agreements are basically all the same,” he explains. “It’s the recipes and the culture that are different.”

He handles every guest complaint himself and is “intimately involved in the contracts.” At a franchise seminar for athletes earlier this summer, his advice was to start working on your transition into business while still playing. “Even if you have to work for free, learn the business. I’ve always had a passion for the people side of business,” he says. “I buy employees a new car when they get to 20 years (with the company).” Tinsley hasn’t given up his basketball career all together. He’s still the president of the board of directors of retired players.

Just like old soldiers never die, old athletes never give up sports. “I’m 63 and they still love to come in and talk basketball,” he says. “Being an athlete helps me in everything. You know how to rebound from failure, you’ve experienced competition, you’re selfmotivated and it opens doors.” And it also teaches you how to enjoy success.