Maybe the best parts of life as a journalist are those moments when you get to go eye-to-eye with one of your heroes and your “job” is to engage them in conversation. And if you get to do that “job” at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio the “work” gets even sweeter.
A couple of weeks ago, leadership legend John Maxwell invited me to join him on stage in Canton to interview football legend, Roger Staubach. We talked about how he went from a kid in Cincinnati, Ohio to a Heisman-trophy winning, two-time Super Bowl winning, Hall-of-Fame quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys. I loved the entire conversation, but he told one story that really grabbed my attention.
Coming into his senior year of high school, Staubach’s coach wanted him to step up and take the job as the team’s quarterback. He actually told his coach, “I don’t want to be quarterback and you’ve already got a great quarterback,” naming off a kid who was bigger, stronger than him. The coach looked at him and said, “Yeah, he may be bigger, stronger, he may have been a quarterback before. But the other boys will follow you.”
Roger Staubach will forever be enshrined in Canton, and yet he didn’t see himself as quarterback. He didn’t see a gift that had little to do with arm strength or accuracy. He told me, “If I didn’t listen to that coach, if I had just said, ‘No, coach, the other guy is the guy,’ first off, I’m not sitting on the stage with you. My bust is not in the Hall of Fame. It was because of what the coach saw in me – that people will follow me – that all this has happened.”