Bill Curry, College Football 19y

Football's challenges can reveal character

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out where the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust, the sweat, and the blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms and the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who in the end, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement, and at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy Roosevelt would have been a marvelous football coach. The daring President was physically and mentally tough. He had a gift for stirring words -- he had written 13 books by the time he became president -- during his stormy career, many of which would doubtless have worked in the football locker room. He was a lover of the wilderness, the hunt, military and political combat.

I heard Bart Starr repeat the "Dare Greatly" paragraph from memory at a speech he gave many years ago. I called and had him recite it to me over the phone while I copied it by hand. The instant I committed it to memory it became part of the fabric of my life. I have since studied Roosevelt with great interest, trying to understand how one from such patrician origins could have been so drawn to the hardnosed world of survival-type competition.

Last week in this column I wrote about driven competitors, their tendency to place too much emphasis on their won-loss record, and their need to grieve each defeat as if it were a kind of death.

Our focus this time is on the indomitable will of the remarkable men who survive in the demanding jobs our football world creates. There are several situations currently that capture the imagination and either create new, more modern heroes or threaten to dethrone ones we have adored for decades.

In our dollar/ratings/celebrity-oriented culture the tendency is to assume the coaches stay at it for the cash. With million-dollar contracts abounding the most frequent phrase I hear from the "experts" is something like, "Yeah, I'd do it, too, for those megabucks!"

No, they would not. The anonymous phone callers and chat room writers, so glib with insults and ridicule, wouldn't last a month in the vicious world of real competition. Since they never show their faces we can't do profiles on them, but psychologists tell us they lack the self-esteem necessary to jump into the arena.

The more vindictive members of the sporting media would be pitiful if they were not so dangerous. They trade in the currency of the outrageous remark, the more outrageous the better. They remind me of the political pundits who pontificate for hours on a daily basis, writing books and columns about the candidates while never having run for office or engaged in honest debate themselves.

Actually in the arena

The football arena is a hostile, lonely, debilitating place. It will test every detail of a man's honor, courage, wits, physical and emotional endurance. It can grind good and evil alike into something like fine powder, and then scatter it to the wind.

When I was a young head coach I interviewed a brilliant guy for a coordinator position on my staff. He had just been fired from a prestigious university as its head coach. After experiencing early success he had fallen on hard times, as is so often the case at such institutions. As we talked I was impressed by his candor about the details of his recent experience and it was clear he could be very valuable to us.

My interest grew until I closed the interview with the seemingly innocuous question, "How are you holding up after your disappointment?"

He startled me with his answer, "I came apart," he said. "The entire experience just crushed me. I really do not know how I can go on."

Our conversation had transitioned from a job interview to a counseling session in which I was out of my depth. Was this guy thinking of suicide?I am happy to report that he went on with his life, got himself together and continued his life as a productive citizen. But he never coached football again. Did the arena destroy him?

I prefer to believe that for him and others like him the arena did not destroy, but rather revealed him. He had failed, but had done so while daring greatly. Armed with that experience and the self-awareness obtained from it, he was able to experience success in other areas.

High achievement
But what about the others, the ones who cannot and will not leave until the last ounce of their energy is spent in this worthy cause? The great ones are not ground up by this Spartan existence. They seem to get stronger and more resolute, with little regard for what is said by others, or even what is happening on the field in some instances. What is their secret?

Amos Alonzo Stagg coached 57 years, retired from coaching at age 98 (he got a late start) and lived to age 103. To put that in perspective, Joe Paterno would have to coach 18 more years to reach the Stagg head coaching total.

The winningest coach of all time regardless of division is John Gagliardi of St. John's in Minnesota. His Division III team, current defending national champions, has won 420 games. Gagliardi is 77 years old and has been a head coach for 56 years. He has no scholarships, no playbook, no compulsory weight lifting, no tackling in practice and no practices over 90 minutes. He is as unconventional as he is resilient. He presses on.

Joe Paterno is in his 39th season at Penn State, and despite calls for his head by the usual skeptics, keeps coaching his men hard and keeps teaching the same principles he has taught since he earned his degree in English from Brown University. He has 341 wins and thousands, perhaps millions, of grateful followers. He tells the truth, and cares not a whit whether the "experts" approve.

Eddie Robinson of Grambling State University won 405 games in 54 years with the Division I-AA program. When I was born in 1942, Coach Robinson was the head coach at Grambling. When I left coaching on my 54th birthday, Coach Robinson was still the head football coach at Grambling State.

A different standard
So we ask, what separates these great men from all the rest?

The most obvious factor is that their value system is one that begins with the education and welfare of their student-athletes. They really believe the human body, mind and soul can be enhanced by the academic/athletic experience. It is that reality that shapes their perception of their mission and the grounding that comes with it.

Their definition of perseverance is different from ours. When they sign up for the long haul they are thinking eternity. The rest of us think in finite, self-serving terms.

Their definition of integrity is different from the norm. When they stress honesty they mean all honest, all the time, for as long as one can walk and talk.

Their definition of high achievement is loftier and more noble than us regular people can fathom. They are not shaken when defeat comes their way. They just fix what is broken and keep on coaching. They do not worry about or listen to those who prescribe solutions from an ignorant distance.

Like all visionaries they live in the moment, doing that which is most important, ignoring that which is irrelevant, and pressing on. No matter what. What a wonderful world it would be if all the rest of us could understand just a bit of what these amazing old coaches live and live and live.

ESPN college football analyst Bill Curry was an NFL center for 10 seasons and coached for 17 years on the college stage. His Center Stage examinations appear each week during the college football season.

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