With Super Bowl Sunday this weekend, it seems appropriate to draw from that event in penning this week’s message. Despite all of the negatives about injury, performance enhancing drugs, extravagant behavior and other human foibles that the media feeds to its hungry audiences, athletes can be a source of emulation for those seeking success in any endeavor.
To become a winning athlete or a winner in life, you must have an all-encompassing desire: desire for success; desire for victory; and desire simply to be the best that you can be. In fact, quite often desire is more important than talent. You’ve got to truly want it to win and this “desire” is something that can’t be given or coached. It emanates from within. You either “want it” or you don’t. There’s no other choice, and this wanting, this desire, must come to you long before you step out into the arena or spotlight. That’s why practice is so important. It builds the desire long before the “game” actually begins.
Once you have the desire, determination and dedication will help you reach whatever you have set as your goals. It’s very easy to get sidelined or distracted by the Super Bowl hype or the buzz both within or surrounding our everyday lives. That’s why it is so important that we keep our minds focused on our goals. The relentless quest, the thing that keeps us going day after day, is our determination. There are no shortcuts in athletics or in everyday life. There are only goals to be set – and goals to be achieved – competition to be faced and adversity to overcome. That is why so few become true champions in either sports or life.
Lastly, the goal that we should all strive for in whatever endeavor we dedicate ourselves to is that we commit to excellence. The legendary NFL football coach, Vince Lombardi, stated it best when he said:
I owe almost everything to football, which I spent the greater part of my life in, and I have never lost my respect, my admiration nor my love for what I consider a great game. Each Sunday after the battle, one group savors victory, another wallows in the bitterness of defeat. The many hurts seem a small price to pay for having won and there is no reason at all which is adequate for having lost.
For the winner there is 100 percent elation, 100 percent laughter, 100 percent fun and for the loser the only thing left is a 100 percent resolution and 100 percent determination. The game, I think, is a great deal like life. Every man makes his own personal commitment toward excellence and toward victory. Although you know ultimate victory can never be completely won, it must be pursued with all one’s might and each week there is a new encounter, each year a new challenge.
All of the rings and all of the money and all of the color and all of the display, they linger only in a memory. But the spirit, the will to win, the will to excel, these are the things that endure and these are the qualities, of course, that are so much more important than any of the events that occur.
I’d like to say that the quality of a man’s life is a full measure of that man’s personal commitment to excellence and to victory, regardless of what field he may be in.
Have an AWE-full weekend and enjoy the game!
William J. “Bill” Bacque