This post isn’t a feel-good story of inspiration like the last couple we’ve written, but it means something to me. Hopefully it will stir something inside you as well.
In a conversation earlier this morning, I was talking to someone about a notion that I have had a tough time coming to terms with as a coach. It has to do with how we view our opponents.
For all of my playing days, and in most of my coaching experience, I believed that it was right to care about and look out for my teammates. I also bought into the idea that the guys on the other side were my adversaries. They were the enemy. And that “enemy” tag applied to every opposing player and coach. My job was to beat the other guy, and I gave zero thought to how vilifying my opponents in my mind shaped my view of others in general. In hindsight, it wasn’t pretty.
So this morning, as I was talking about the idea that those that we compete against can be viewed as partners in a mutual striving for excellence, rather than as enemies, a random memory came to mind from my freshman year of college football. I was not a good college football player. I was about 170 pounds and not very fast. Not a good combination, so I don’t often find myself fondly reminiscing about my college playing days. But the memory of practices that first year, when we would do goal-line situations, came back to me in a hurry.
Goal-line was something of a relief for guys like me, because we would never have worry about being on the field. Nobody wants a 170 pound lead blocker. So the other little guys and I were free to relax and take it all in. We would watch the big dudes get after each other. And nobody got after each other more ferociously than John and Dave. John was a senior linebacker and Dave was our fullback, and the collisions those two guys would have in the short-yardage drills made the earth shake. It was the most intense hitting I’ve ever seen on a practice field. The two of them would absolutely light each other up. Nobody got after it like that. You would have thought they hated each other.
Not the case. Those two guys were the best of friends. They hung out together all the time and really cared about each other. They were all about making each other better. I didn’t think about it at the time, but looking back it was obvious. They weren’t enemies. They were partners who were sharpening each other with every hit.
Now if that can be the way players who care about each other deeply go about their practice, why does it have to stop there? Why can’t we view games and competition that way? Are we afraid that we’ll “go soft” and our performance will suffer? Ask John and Dave if pushing your best friend, who you respect and care about deeply hurt their performance. I doubt they ever played harder or better in games than they did in those drills. I guarantee that a desire to respect and bring out the best in our opponents will have the effect of bringing out the best in ourselves as well. For me, I wish I’d been smart enough or mature enough to begin to figure this all out 25 years ago. I would have spared myself a whole lot of needless, senseless hatred toward my opponents, and would have been a better player and coach along the way.