Chapter 10
Responsibility
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Mark Twain
Even children are known by the way they act, whether their conduct is pure, and whether it is right.
Proverbs 20:11
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
Thomas Jefferson
Most of all, my brothers and sisters, never take an oath, by heaven or earth or anything else. Just say a simple yes or no, so that you will not sin and be condemned.
James 5:12
For most of our players, leadership is an important part of their role. They want to be thought of as leaders and looked up to as role models. You hear some athletes today say they don’t want that pressure, that little kids shouldn’t be looking to athletes as role models. Our guys desire that responsibility.
We talk a lot about the microscope they’re under as players for Ohio State. In becoming Buckeyes, they’ve inherited a certain amount of responsibility. We don’t assume they understand that fully, so we teach them the fundamentals of Doing Right and Accepting Responsibility.
In football, as in life, every small part of your craft is important. The minute you ignore a fundamental, you begin to lower your standards for your craft, and your work suffers.
Responsibility wasn’t one of our original fundamentals when we started the Winners Manual back in 1986, but after several years, we came to the conclusion that we could no longer take certain things for granted.
When Vince Lombardi, the great football coach of the Green Bay Packers, wanted to get back to fundamentals, he didn’t take anything for granted either. He is said to have held up a football as he looked intently around the room and then announced, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” In the spirit of Lombardi, we felt that nothing was too basic to teach our players. We wanted to get down to the bedrock of our expectations for every player who was coming into our program.
Be Responsible and Do Right
When a prospective coach interviews for a position, people want to know what kind of standards he has for his players. They want to know the sanctions he’ll mete out if a ballplayer breaks a rule. Administrators want to know the coach’s approach to academics and whether he or she will require the players to be real students.
I’m the last one to have a long list of possible sanctions for players. I don’t believe in it. But I do believe in telling each player what we’re going to expect of him. It’s simple: We expect each person on the team to “be responsible” and “do right.” And if we’re going to expect it, then it’s up to us as coaches to teach the players how to do those two things. We need to talk about them often and keep them in the forefront of the players’ minds. I’m not saying that players don’t already have a sense of responsibility and a desire to do right when they arrive at Ohio State, because most have had great parents and/or mentors who have given them a wonderful foundation. But we want to review, talk about, and practice those qualities, so that they become even more ingrained in the players’ lives.
It’s interesting that when I talk with our seniors, or even with players who have graduated and moved on to other careers, they say that this section on responsibility and doing right is one of the fundamentals they appreciate most. I say, “If I asked you to speak to the team about one fundamental, which one would you choose?” Responsibility and doing right are always at the top of the list. I think that’s because the guys recognize that our society has a deep struggle with responsibility. The definitions of right and wrong keep shifting, and the line is fluid. Many people have no objective standard for judging what “right” is. So discussing what it means to “do right,” and working through it and practicing it, become welcome disciplines for our players. It helps them define their own terms of right and wrong.
I’ve seen players make some very poor choices—things I couldn’t believe they’d even consider doing. And that further emphasizes to us coaches the fact that we have to tackle these ideas head-on and not assume that our players have an inherent knowledge of what’s right.
Norman Vincent Peale said we all have sensors and that we really know whether or not we’re doing the right thing. He said we have a little twinge inside that says, No, I shouldn’t do this. But I don’t take for granted that we all have the same “twinge level.” So the idea of responsibility and doing right has become one of our most valuable fundamentals. Truly, no detail of this is too small to work on.
With Tradition Comes Responsibility
My Winners Manual has a large star next to this Japanese proverb: “The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.” When most people make a mistake in life, others may or may not notice. When a football player makes a mistake at Ohio State, the report explodes through the media. We’re careful to explain the reality of media scrutiny to our players from the very first day, and every chance we get, we reinforce the reality of that scrutiny through current events and examples of people who had had good reputations but whose mistakes changed their lives in an instant.
As you walk up the steps to our game room, you’ll see some old uniforms hanging on the wall to illustrate the historical evolution of the Ohio State uniform. These represent the great players of the past who are part of our heritage. In gigantic letters above those uniforms is this sentence: “With tradition comes responsibility.”
That’s a huge deal to us because we want our players to always remember what a privilege it is to play at Ohio State. And along with that privilege comes responsibility. In this fundamental we have the opportunity to explain why privilege and responsibility go hand in hand.
If I were to identify one of the biggest changes to occur in the relationship between players and coaches over the past twenty years, it would be the players’ insistence on knowing why. When I began coaching, we told the players what to do, and they did it. Today, they want to know why they’re doing what they’re doing and what the ramifications are if they don’t toe the line or do something properly. Knowing why deepens their resolve to do things right—whether it’s a drill, a behavior, or an attitude—because they truly understand why it’s important.
In discussing this fundamental, we cover a number of principles, such as the danger of a player ruining his reputation with “the conduct of one hour.” And we not only try to get these fundamentals across to the players, but we also believe there are strategic times to present this material.
In 2007, the day we scheduled to have this discussion in our Quiet Time was Friday, August 24. That was a strategic day because we had been in training camp since August 5 and the players had basically been in “lockdown” day and night. The first part of camp is known as “eat, sleep, and meet,” because that’s all the guys do for three weeks. Finally, on the twenty-fourth, they got their first chance at freedom. They were off duty from noon on Friday until 4 p.m. on Sunday, which is when we would transition to our game-week preparation. That weekend provides a dangerous opportunity to err, because it’s something like being on leave in the military. The guys say, “Hallelujah, I’m outta here!” So, before they go, we remind them of the fundamentals of taking responsibility and doing right.
Later, just before school starts, we go over this subject again. At that point, the other students are returning to campus, and all the parties are starting. We feel we owe it to the players to constantly remind them, just as a mother would, “Be in by ten.” If the kids were younger, their mother might say, “Stay away from the railroad tracks. It’s dangerous down there.”
It’s all in the presentation, of course. Nobody wants to be talked to like a child. But, we know that, like children, young adults can forget about the importance of being responsible and doing right. In one impetuous moment, they can lose all they’ve worked so hard to achieve. So we tell them, “We know you already know this, but we want to remind you.” We want them to know how to distinguish wrong from right, bad from good, and better from best.
Character or Conscience?
I try to steer away from the word character when I’m dealing with young people, and I’ve had some good discussions with friends about this. But to me, addressing the idea of someone’s character almost feels as if we’re evaluating that person according to our own subjective standards: Does he have good character? Does she have good character? What does that really mean?
I prefer to use the word conscience, because I think what we’re really asking is this: Is this young man aware of what’s right? Does he have an intentional restraint at work in his life? Does he have a conscience? Does it bother him when he does wrong things? If you have a tender conscience, a functioning moral barometer that tells you when something is amiss, then you will automatically work toward living an upright life.
It’s almost like trying to get clean water from a stagnant pool. It’s not until you go back to the source of the water that you’re going to get something pure.
I like to use the word conscience instead of character because it takes the focus off of our opinion and puts it on the actions of the other person. The book of Proverbs says, “Fear of the LORD is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline” (1:7). Reverence for God, a conscious desire not to disappoint him, is where it all begins.
To help our players put things in perspective, we show them examples of past players and others who have gone before us, whose lives and legacy we build upon. We tell them about the shoulders we all stand on, so that the new players can gain an understanding that they’re not just out there playing for themselves or even for the current team but for all the teams and all the players who have worn the scarlet and gray.
Every time a current player gets into trouble, you know there’s an Ohio State graduate in some office somewhere who is going to hear it from the Purdue grad he works with.
“I see your guys are having some problems,” the Purdue grad will say.
Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation: for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.
George Washington
Now, there’s a problem with someone who would judge an entire school or program because of a mistake one person makes. That’s not fair. But it does underscore our responsibility as coaches to talk to the players about doing right and the significance of the choices they make every day.
Doing the right thing can be a challenge on a college campus. When a new player comes in, a lot of people want to get to know him, be around him, hang out with him, and give him beer or even drugs. And then there are the agents, who are looking for the next star. They see a talented player as their meal ticket. They know right away who’s going to be worth millions, and they want to get next to him. They’ll entice him with their words and with an offer that sounds pretty good.
To be honest, we’ve emphasized this section more and more over the past few years at the request of the players. Every year we have the students evaluate the effectiveness of what we’re doing, and we ask, “What can we do to help each other deal with all the negative influences and problems in our world?” I guess it’s not very different from people who own a chain of restaurants and want to know how they can teach their employees not to steal from the cash register. Of course, the workers’ rationale may be, “Hey, the owner of this place makes a ton of money, and I’m not getting paid enough. Nobody’s going to miss a little cash here and there.” But if the worker skims from the till to supplement his income, that reflects a problem of conscience.
Integrity and Truth
As I’ve listened to the players, I’ve become fired up more than ever to cover this section well. We can’t scale back, because even though the culture of our team might be at a good level, society as a whole still has a lot of problems, and the players need to be prepared. In my opinion, we need to turn up the heat. For whatever reason, our society doesn’t value honesty, and it doesn’t value ethical treatment of employers. A lot of people sit at their desks and surf the Internet when they’re supposed to be working. They steal from the company supply closet. They think these are just little, insignificant things that nobody will notice. Well, we need to turn it around and ask ourselves, “If I were the boss, would I want my employees playing solitaire when a report is due?”
There are so many examples of this kind of behavior in our society. Maybe we borrow a friend’s CD and copy it because we like just one song and don’t want to buy the whole CD. That’s essentially stealing from the artist who created that song, but we tell ourselves it’s okay because entertainers make so much money. We rationalize our behavior to the point that our conscience isn’t even engaged. The same thing happens when we fudge on our tax returns or when we exceed the speed limit on the highway. Many times we do these things in front of our children. They see what Mom and Dad are doing, and the message comes through loud and clear.
A lack of integrity has a ripple effect. The actions of one person affect so many others. A friend told me a story about a house he bought. His family had lived there for a few years when they found a stain on the carpet in one of the bedrooms. The room was next door to the shower stall in one of the bathrooms, and when they traced the stain, they found that mold had been growing in the house for years.
As it turned out, the guy who built the house had installed the shower pan incorrectly. He had stapled the rubber membrane that was supposed to protect the stall from leakage; so every time the family took a shower in there, the water dripped out. That one little mistake affected all the contiguous rooms, cost the new owners a lot of money, and created a health concern.
That also reminds me of the story—I don’t know if it’s true—of the pilot who ejected from the airplane, pulled his rip cord, and made it safely to the ground. He had never thought about the importance of having a working parachute, so when he got on the ground and was folding up his parachute, he looked at the name on the inspection tag. It was his own grandmother’s.
You’d better be able to count on the airplane mechanic or the person who inspected your parachute or the guy who installed the brakes on your car. You’d better hope that person has integrity on the job and isn’t just going through the motions. That’s what responsibility is. Whatever your role, and no matter how small you think that role is, the team has to be able to count on you. You have to do your job and do it well, with all your heart.
To me, stay-at-home moms are good examples of commitment and integrity. Over the past few decades, many in our society have perceived stay-at-home moms as insignificant and have concluded that when women make the choice to stay home with their kids, they’re throwing away their lives and wasting their talents. I want to say, “What? Are you kidding me? That’s the most important thing a person could ever do.” In society as a whole—as with a team—everyone’s role is huge, because the success of the team depends on the hard work of each and every player. I’m thankful every day for my own mom’s commitment to her role as a mother.
When Temptation Comes Knocking
I’m sure I can’t imagine what our guys face every day and all the things they have to avoid or say no to. When I was in school, there were never any girls knocking on my dorm-room door. (I’ll admit that may not be just a product of the era I’m from.) But it’s a different society today, a much more difficult and complex world. These are not the good old days, when you went to church on Sunday and ate every meal at home with the family and talked about the lessons you’d learned. With the pace of life today, I don’t know how many families still get to sit down together even once a week and have any kind of quality time. They’re going through the drive-through and heading to the next practice, and the kids are either watching a video on the onboard DVD system or listening to music on their portable media players.
If it’s true that we’re becoming more and more fragmented as a society and going whatever direction we see fit, I think it makes the Big Ten Fundamentals even more important. I know it fires our passion as coaches to equip our players and plant the seeds that will one day grow to maturity in their lives.
There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.
French Proverb
Class
Manners are like the zero in arithmetic; they may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal to the value of everything else.
Dame Freya Madeleine Stark (1893–1993)
We encourage our players to exercise responsibility and right living by having class. Class is the way you carry yourself; it’s not a socioeconomic designation. It’s not about how much money you make or don’t make. It’s not a way to pigeonhole people. Class is a way of life—a way of acting with confidence and style that reflects well on you and your team. It’s having the freedom to do anything you want but choosing the right path.
You don’t want to base how you live on what other people think of you. If you do, you’ll always be struggling to live up to an image, trying to figure out what will make you look good in other people’s eyes. Of course, I think there’s a place to ask yourself, How do I want others to view me? If someone were to ask those people what kind of person I am, what would I want them to say?
When our players treat the hotel employees well when we’re on the road during bowl week, or when airline personnel compliment our guys on their courtesy, those players know they’re acting with class, courtesy, and respect.
Some of our players come into the program with a healthy view of what the word class means. Others haven’t had as many experiences, and they’re at a different starting point. When those who have a little further to grow see how people react to their courtesy, politeness, or respect, they really like the positive feedback. Bringing a smile to someone’s face or a warm feeling to someone’s heart is rewarding.
When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.
Luke 12:48
Class is not arrogance. It doesn’t put you above anyone else, and it doesn’t call attention to itself; it simply treats people with respect.
Carrying Ourselves With Class
A good illustration of living with class happened in 2006 when we were playing the Texas Longhorns in Austin. Our general procedure when we travel to an away game is to go to the hotel first, change into sweats, and head over to the stadium. We walk around the locker room, see the sideline and the press box, and generally get a feel for the lay of the land. I like for our guys to see the venue and feel the atmosphere where we’ll be playing the next day. We find out which end of the field we’ll warm up on, where we’ll go at halftime—the offense will be here, the defense there—and get a basic orientation to the game site.
When we arrived in Austin, we found that Texas is a top-drawer operation. They had a police officer there to provide basic security and make sure no autograph seekers would get to our players. We went into the stadium, did our walk-through, and then headed back to the hotel.
The next day was long, because it was a night game, but we made it through all the preliminaries, did our warm-ups, stayed focused, and in the end, won the game. I was the last guy out of the stadium for our team because I had media obligations. As I was leaving, the police officer who had been with us for two days stopped me.
“Coach,” he said, “I just wanted you to know something. I’ve been at this post for about twenty-five years, and I’ve seen a lot of teams come in and out of here. I have to tell you, I knew on Friday that our team was in for a tough time. Your players were courteous to me, and I could tell they were courteous toward one another. Everything they did was very businesslike, as if they had a job to do and they were going to get it done. They carried themselves with class. I knew your guys were ready for this game. I just want you to know that I was really impressed, and you ought to be proud of the way they represented Ohio State.”
Honor is better than honors.
Abraham Lincoln
I can’t tell you how good that made me feel, and I made sure I told the team what the officer had said. It was motivation for them to do the same thing all the time, whether it was directed toward hotel staff, someone at the stadium, or on the airplane.
I met a man on a flight once who was interviewing prospects for the upcoming NFL draft. Later, we bumped into each other again at baggage claim, and I saw his college championship ring. I joked with him and said, “You’re not here recruiting, are you? You stay out of Ohio. You’ve got enough recruits back in your home state.”
He laughed and said he was just coming back from some interviews. “I want you to know, your guys get it,” he said. “They understand what this is all about. And it’s going to do nothing but help their draft status.”
That was the year we had fourteen guys drafted, an NFL record since they went to the seven-round draft format. I think the scout was saying that our players had not only a concept of “team” but also an active conscience. They understood what doing right is all about. It makes you proud as a coach when, unsolicited, people who have nothing to gain by saying something nice will praise the conduct of your team. It makes you proud anytime your guys are seen as having class.
Guarding Your Tongue
It may be because of my upbringing that this principle is so ingrained, but the way you speak about others and the way you talk to others say so much about who you are. The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about the mouth and the tongue. A couple of verses in particular come to mind:
Watch your tongue and keep your mouth shut, and you will stay out of trouble.
Proverbs 21:23
Hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher
Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.
Proverbs 18:13
The words you use and the way you use them reflect the kind of person you are. So we’ve included a significant amount in the Winners Manual about guarding your tongue, because we give people impressions about us by what we say. Am I really a team player, or do I run people down when they’re not around? Do I feel as if I have to criticize others to make myself feel better? Am I sensitive to the fact that my words really do affect how others feel?
Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” I love that quote because it implies that keeping our mouths shut takes real discipline. I don’t know how many times in my life I would have been better off just shutting my mouth and walking away rather than saying something I later regretted.
Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Luke 18:14
We talked about the importance of humility in the chapter on attitude, but this quote from the Gospel of Luke indicates that those who are truly great will carry themselves with class. If you always have to be the one in the spotlight, the one getting all the honors; if you’re always building yourself up at the expense of others, at some point life is going to humble you. It’s better to help others up and give of yourself. Let someone else exalt you in due time. That’s the path to true honor.
We talk a lot about this description of class. It’s respect. It doesn’t make excuses. It never brags. It’s important for us to talk about these things, because when athletes play in a program like ours, there’s no question they’re going to be placed on a pedestal. And if there’s even a hint of attitude—“I’m great, I’m a star”—it’s going to be published or broadcast across the country. If a player is obnoxious and full of himself, people are going to pick up on that. However, if he’s respectful of others, if he’s nice to the staff who serve him when he sits at a team meal, if he thanks the bus driver when he’s getting off the bus, all of those things create a general impression about him.
Another area of concern when it comes to class is the type of language a player or coach uses. This one strikes home for everybody, no matter what their age, because we’ve all been exposed to people who use four-letter words and can do it almost as an art form. The locker-room chatter and foul language can become second nature, because it’s what many of our players have always heard. So we present a page in the Winners Manual that’s meant to be humorous but gets the point across in a tongue-in-cheek way:
We don’t have a rule about swearing, or a penalty system for every foul word we hear. As coaches, we try to lead by example. If I’m in the locker room and I hear a guy spouting off, all I have to do is look at him and say his name. That look alone serves as a potent reminder. To me that’s more important than putting a quarter in a cup for every swear word.
If a guy is running off at the mouth, I might say something like, “If your mom were here, would you talk that way?” Certainly he would rather do anything than disappoint his mother, because she’s important to him.
To me, that type of training is a lot more helpful than a bunch of rules. It’s more relational.
And when you think about it, that’s what the fear of God is. I don’t ever want to disappoint God. I want him to be happy about the way I’m living my life, and I accomplish that with my commitment to finding out what “doing right” is and then doing it.
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Honor Code
At the beginning of the year, we have our guys write an honor code. We enlarge it and make it into a sign that we hang in the locker room. Every one of us, coaches included, writes it in his Winners Manual, and then we all sign it and pledge to follow the honor code.
Here’s the code the guys wrote for the 2007 season:
The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. As a member of the Ohio State football team/family, I will abide by this quote at all times in order to represent myself, my family, my teammates with the highest degree of class and dignity.
It’s interesting to see how that code changes each year and the particular things the guys will highlight. These aren’t my words or some assistant coach’s idea of what the guys should do. This is what the honor committee—team members who hash out what’s important—believes honor means to the team. This year, the team will once again write its honor code during preseason, and then we’ll try to uphold those ideals every day, in every game and in every relationship.
Questions for Reflection
1. If you were to write an honor code for yourself or your team, what would it look like? Study the example of the Ohio State team honor code, and then write your own below.
It takes less time to do the right thing than to explain why you did it wrong.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
2. The responsibility of doing the right thing can weigh a person down when the focus is on rules and regulations. Do you agree with the approach of giving people expectations rather than a list of dos and don’ts? Why or why not?
3. Who among your acquaintances has shown the most class? Tell that person about what you’ve read and compliment his or her behavior.
4. If police officers, restaurant workers, cashiers at the grocery store, or those in any other service roles were to comment on your treatment of them, how would you measure up on the question of class? Is there anything you need to do to change that?
Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.
Thomas Carlyle
5. Whose shoulders do you stand on in your career? What responsibility do you have to yourself, your team, and to those who have gone before you?
Your Personal Game Plan
1. Personal/Family: One of the most difficult places to tame the tongue is with your family. How can you be more considerate this week in your communication with those you love?
2. Spiritual/Moral: What is your biggest struggle in choosing the right thing to do? Is there someone who could come alongside and help you make that choice? If so, ask that person today to do so.
3. Caring/Giving: You will probably come in contact with someone today that you could simply walk past without speaking. Plan now not only to notice the person and speak to him or her but also to go out of your way to be kind, and see what happens.
4. Health/Fitness: It may be more difficult for you to treat others with class when you don’t treat yourself that way. What can you do for yourself in the next few days that will help you in the long run to give more to others?
5. Your Team: If negative words or harmful speech can hurt those around you, how much can positive words do? How can you intentionally use your speech today to build up someone on your team?
6. Academics/Career: What moral choices do you have to make on the job every day? Are there hidden temptations to slack off, take something that belongs to the company, or fudge in some way? Make a list of things that have been temptations or that could be considered compromising, and plan now how you’ll handle each of those when they come up.