Bill Green

William E. Green (December 8, 1940 – March 15, 1994) was an American basketball player. He was a college basketball standout for Colorado State University (CSU) between 1960–61 and 1962–63. He led the Rams in both scoring and rebounding for all three seasons and remains etched in the school's record book for both categories. Every season that Green suited up for CSU they qualified for a postseason tournament. In his sophomore and junior years, the Rams earned berths into the National Invitation Tournament. They reached the quarterfinals and first round, respectively. During his senior year, the Rams lost in the first round of the 1963 NCAA Tournament to Oklahoma City, 70–67. For his three-year career, Green averaged 22.1 points and 9.6 rebounds per game. It was a foregone conclusion that he would play a professional sport, He won EPBL/EBA championships with the Barons in 1969 and the Apollos in 1971. Green was selected to the All-EPBL First Team in 1968.

Later life Realizing that any future as a professional athlete was out of the question, Green earned a master's degree from Brooklyn College. He taught in several New York City public schools afterward, and then in 1971 became the principal of Jordan L. Mott School in the South Bronx. The school, an extremely dangerous and under-performing one, greatly turned around with Green's direction. He enacted stringent rules that made students earn certain grades and reach specified numbers of "class points" to be able to even attend the school's basketball games, let alone play in them. Green also created an atmosphere of intellectual competition whereby different classes within each grade would compete against one another—literally sitting desk-to-desk—and earn points for their class based on the outcomes. He would then post the school's weekly updated class and grade rankings in the hallways, which the students would intently follow. His methods, although unconventional, worked, and even though Jordan L. Mott School was pulling its students from two of the poorest performing elementary schools in New York City, most students were in the top 11% of all city public schools in terms of their reading level by the time they left Mott (after 8th grade). He had earned myriad awards honoring his school's success.

Green died on March 15, 1994, at age 53.