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Ray Lewis recently offered a window into his Hall of Fame football career. He said it turned at the University of Miami when he decided who he wanted to be.
“Before I leave here, I will be the greatest Hurricane to ever walk through this university,” Lewis said to North Carolina Central University graduates. “That wasn’t arrogance. That was identity.”
It’s one of my favorite seasons in sports: The commencement season. There’s no better month to examine what sports really teaches beyond how it can be dangerous giving an open microphone to some of sports biggest names.
The selected speakers are older now, surely wiser, and around the country are compressing their career values into a 20-minute speech to counsel tomorrow’s hopes. At least that’s the idea.
“I want to talk about one word: Integrity,” said Jalen Rose, the basketball voice, to Michigan graduates.
“I live by this word and want you to live by this word: Overdeliver,” basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson told Stillman (Ala.) College graduates.
“I want you to challenge yourself with ideas that are uncomfortable and people who push you to be your very best,” Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady told Georgetown University graduates. “Even if one of those people is a cranky old coach who cuts the sleeves off his sweatshirt and screams at you all day, ‘Do your job!’ OK, that’s too specific in my experience, but you guys get the point.”
Each May, these speeches offer a window in the varieties of success. And there’s one common theme that resonates from all these known winners: Losing.
“There’s going to be tough times,” said John Harbaugh, the New York Giants coach and recently fired Baltimore Ravens coach to Miami (Ohio) University graduates. “They’re going to show up. You might get a call with some bad news — maybe about your job. Maybe they’ll tell you they don’t want you anymore. Time to move on. It happens. In those moments, I hope you find resilience and be able to rejoice in all the good times you’ll still have.”
Lindsey Vonn, still recovering from her Olympic ski accident in February, told University of Southern California graduates, “I’m not up here to tell you how to win. I’m up here to tell you how to keep going when you fall and why, if you do, the winning will come.”
She didn’t change her ways despite criticism that, “my style was too wrong, that I was too aggressive, that I didn’t have the right body type or simply have what it took.” She kept going despite, “moments where defeat almost consumed me,” she said.
“One of the few guarantees in life is that you’re going to fall and it’s going to hurt. In that moment, how you respond will matter more than anything else. What can this teach me? Then get back up and apply what you learned. And go again.”
It’s not just coaches and athletes counseling America’s graduates again this May. Every walk in life gets to offer its lessons in commencement season. For instance, country singer Eric Church said life, like a guitar, needs everything working in harmony from family to faith to community.
“Six strings,” Church told North Carolina graduates. “When all six are in tune, the chords they make can stop a conversation cold, carry a broken person through the worst night of their life, or make a room full of strangers feel for three minutes like they’ve known each other forever. But if even one is off, the whole chord unravels.”
Here’s what these commencement addresses teaches you, year after year: The successful get to tell their story. They walked the walk. Now players from the dynastic New England Patriots get to talk the talk. It’s not just a big name like Brady.
“I believe our biggest strength was our togetherness, our brotherhood, our connectivity, the way we did life together,” Patriots special-team star Matthew Slater told Providence College graduates. “We laughed together. We cried together. We struggled together.
“And ultimately, we grew together. We shared a human experience, and we understood that we were part of something bigger than ourselves.”
They can joke about it now, too.
“I usually don’t do well with compliments — I had a coach for 20 years tell me how s— I was every day,” Brady said.
He then offered the graduates what passes as sports wisdom.
“The tests are over in school — thank God — but the tests in life, they never end. You will be tested every day, and those tests are the prep for the life that you want to live.”
____
Continue reading...
“Before I leave here, I will be the greatest Hurricane to ever walk through this university,” Lewis said to North Carolina Central University graduates. “That wasn’t arrogance. That was identity.”
It’s one of my favorite seasons in sports: The commencement season. There’s no better month to examine what sports really teaches beyond how it can be dangerous giving an open microphone to some of sports biggest names.
The selected speakers are older now, surely wiser, and around the country are compressing their career values into a 20-minute speech to counsel tomorrow’s hopes. At least that’s the idea.
“I want to talk about one word: Integrity,” said Jalen Rose, the basketball voice, to Michigan graduates.
“I live by this word and want you to live by this word: Overdeliver,” basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson told Stillman (Ala.) College graduates.
“I want you to challenge yourself with ideas that are uncomfortable and people who push you to be your very best,” Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady told Georgetown University graduates. “Even if one of those people is a cranky old coach who cuts the sleeves off his sweatshirt and screams at you all day, ‘Do your job!’ OK, that’s too specific in my experience, but you guys get the point.”
Each May, these speeches offer a window in the varieties of success. And there’s one common theme that resonates from all these known winners: Losing.
“There’s going to be tough times,” said John Harbaugh, the New York Giants coach and recently fired Baltimore Ravens coach to Miami (Ohio) University graduates. “They’re going to show up. You might get a call with some bad news — maybe about your job. Maybe they’ll tell you they don’t want you anymore. Time to move on. It happens. In those moments, I hope you find resilience and be able to rejoice in all the good times you’ll still have.”
Lindsey Vonn, still recovering from her Olympic ski accident in February, told University of Southern California graduates, “I’m not up here to tell you how to win. I’m up here to tell you how to keep going when you fall and why, if you do, the winning will come.”
She didn’t change her ways despite criticism that, “my style was too wrong, that I was too aggressive, that I didn’t have the right body type or simply have what it took.” She kept going despite, “moments where defeat almost consumed me,” she said.
“One of the few guarantees in life is that you’re going to fall and it’s going to hurt. In that moment, how you respond will matter more than anything else. What can this teach me? Then get back up and apply what you learned. And go again.”
It’s not just coaches and athletes counseling America’s graduates again this May. Every walk in life gets to offer its lessons in commencement season. For instance, country singer Eric Church said life, like a guitar, needs everything working in harmony from family to faith to community.
“Six strings,” Church told North Carolina graduates. “When all six are in tune, the chords they make can stop a conversation cold, carry a broken person through the worst night of their life, or make a room full of strangers feel for three minutes like they’ve known each other forever. But if even one is off, the whole chord unravels.”
Here’s what these commencement addresses teaches you, year after year: The successful get to tell their story. They walked the walk. Now players from the dynastic New England Patriots get to talk the talk. It’s not just a big name like Brady.
“I believe our biggest strength was our togetherness, our brotherhood, our connectivity, the way we did life together,” Patriots special-team star Matthew Slater told Providence College graduates. “We laughed together. We cried together. We struggled together.
“And ultimately, we grew together. We shared a human experience, and we understood that we were part of something bigger than ourselves.”
They can joke about it now, too.
“I usually don’t do well with compliments — I had a coach for 20 years tell me how s— I was every day,” Brady said.
He then offered the graduates what passes as sports wisdom.
“The tests are over in school — thank God — but the tests in life, they never end. You will be tested every day, and those tests are the prep for the life that you want to live.”
____
Continue reading...
