BELICHICK, DR. KING & UPSIDE DOWN VALUES. How do the hated Patriots rule the NFL? Jerry Rice overcame poor speed with harder work. Fred Astaire was not a great dancer but a great rehearser.[i] Tom Brady, maybe The Greatest of All Time, has won more Super Bowls and MVPs than Wheaties has flakes, yet he opts to rank only 15th in QB pay.
“Kid,” said YMCA Coach Tony, “yur upside-down. Ya missed class the day they gave out bodies ‘n other fighters got all the muscles. They ain’t blind like a bat with the asthma ‘n don’t cry ‘n wheeze in the ring.” I strove to be a black male youth, an honorable goal for which I was poorly suited. Coach was training me to box other street kids who were stronger, faster and tougher.
“Build yur try, yur endurance. First round, the opponent’ll beat you like a bongo drum. But in the last round, he’s tired, arm-weary, slow, ‘n his kidneys hurt. If yur conditioned better and got the spirit to be tough when yur tired, sure as bears crap in the woods, you’ll beat a stronger fighter.”
The YMCA’s upside down values: Mind, Body, Spirit. Spirit meant courage, and we got courage by practicing it, again and again. From courage came a better Body to be used for right purposes, and a Mind that would help others. Without moral courage, I’d be an ego with biceps and would use Mind to be a show-off. For little pay, my coaches trained angry and violent teens in the disciplines of moral courage. They taught us not to look good, but to be good to others.
The Pats are also upside-down. Others saw Brady, Edelman, White and Van Noy as weak, small and as promising as my first attempts to box. Coach Belichick studies the opponent’s moral flaws and then game-plans to win; his opponents try to beat him with physical strength.
| NFL: SKINNY BRADY | COURAGEOUS BRADY | |
| 1 | Bad measurables, never saw a weight room, poor musculature, poor build | Out-works, out-studies, out-practices others |
| 2 | Weak in talent, not athletic, can’t throw a tight spiral | Courageous, calm, no panic, blame or griping |
| 3 | Lacks physical stature, strength, gangly, a ping pong player | Loves teammates, team, values |
| 4 | Poor decision-making, can’t read defenses, easy to sack | Tough, executes under pressure and in pain |
Belichick values courage, humility and responsibility. They love team more than self and the game more than raises. They embrace a gut-busting Ranger School-like regimen to be the NFL’s smartest, most reliable and best-conditioned team. The Pats chose to run onto the field as a team with no names. They don’t showboat; they toss each other’s hair. They improve from early games and learn from first halves and win in the 4th quarter by being smarter, stronger, more focused and more inter-dependent. Not all NFL players, or people in other fields, want to be humble or work that hard.
It’s not being bigger, special or having groovy music, cool threads, fun friends or living based on how we feel. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., our true identity is not in color of skin, beauty of thoughts, depth of passion, specialness of Me, or firmness of bodies.
He said his children should be judged by the content of their character. That was for us. We are our selflessness and our brave oaths to honor all persons. We are the quotient of our courage.
Can you live his upside-down words? 1. Are you selfless or selfish? 2. Respect all persons or dis those who disagree with you? 3. Self-disciplined or quick to anger? 4. Always improving how you treat others or increasing how you blame others? May we all improve our answers!
Next time: the difference between honesty, grit, ethics, courage and character.
| NFL (PHYSICAL) | PATS (COURAGE) | |
| 1 | Stand-out statistics | TRUSTWORTHY |
| 2 | Strength, Size, Speed | SELFLESS |
| 3 | Agility, the Combine | TOUGHEST |
| 4 | Smart enough | LEAD OTHERS |
| 5 | Ego but not too big | DO THE RIGHT THING |
From The Courage Quotient, the working title of Gus’s next book.
Photo: http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/15160801/new-england-patriots-bill-belichick-calls-tom-brady-greatest-quarterback-all
[i] Attributed to Fred Astaire
