Discovering The Humanity Behind Your Heroes

There’s an old saying in sports writing that you should never meet your hero because they’ll always let you down. And in our current world of sports scandals and tarnished legacies, that assumption seems even more real.

But it’s far from the truth. A few years ago I had the incredible opportunity to work on a book with Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears as he was dying from autoimmune liver disease. Though I’d admired Payton’s gridiron feats from afar, I found him to be an even greater human being in person…and that his servant leadership far exceeded my hero worship.