Chapter 11
Team
Try to forget yourself in the service of others. For when we think too much of ourselves and our own interests, we easily become despondent. But when we work for others, our efforts return to bless us.
Sidney Powell
Unity is the great need of the hour, and if we are united we can get many of the things that we not only desire but which we justly deserve.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others.
1 Corinthians 10:24
Together
Everyone
Achieves
More
You can’t slice up morals.
John Steinbeck
Each of the Big Ten Fundamentals affects every component of the Block O. But of all the tools we discuss with our players, the one that best allows us to understand and experience success is TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More.
We talk a lot about the fact that winning is more than individual achievement or success. It’s even bigger and broader than our team’s success. In fact, in every area of life, I don’t know if we’re capable of accomplishing much without understanding that what we’re working toward is much larger than we are as individuals or as a team.
In 1991, our Youngstown State team won the national championship in Division I-AA. When we arrived home after the game, ten thousand screaming fans met us at the Youngstown airport. The population of the city at the time was about ninety-seven thousand, so a crowd of ten thousand people represented a good percentage of the population, and there was great excitement about our victory over Marshall University.
When we stepped off the plane and tried to make our way through the throng to the bus that would take us back to campus, an older gentleman pushed his way through the crowd to get to me. I could see in his eyes the hardness of the years that had passed.
With tears streaming down his face, he said, “This is the greatest day in my life since V-E Day.” This man had probably lived in Youngstown his whole life. After World War II, he’d probably worked in the mill, probably lost his job when the economy turned, and his family had no doubt struggled. It appeared that between the time of the Allies’ victory in Europe and our team’s victory on the football field, things hadn’t gone very well for this man. But to know that our team had brought such joy to his heart, and to all of Youngstown, was a huge bonus for us.
Every great team I’ve ever been a part of has at some point come to the realization that our winning or losing affects more than just those of us in the room. It’s easy to recognize that at Ohio State, with the throngs in the stadium and hundreds of thousands of alumni all over the country. ESPN declared the Ohio State/Michigan rivalry the greatest in all of sports. You have two great institutions in adjacent states; the history of the rivalry is legendary; the characters who have been involved over the years seem bigger than life; and many times when the two teams play, the league championship is on the line. Freshmen jump into Mirror Lake on the OSU campus—in November—to show their support, so you can see the magnitude of that one game.
But even if you don’t have such history or rivalry, you must understand that any endeavor is a group journey. When you play for more than just the guys on the field, you can achieve the inner satisfaction and peace of mind that come from being part of something much larger than yourself.
Great Teams Are Unselfish
Dr. Pat “Doc” Spurgeon, my good friend and mentor, has told me many times that every great team has two vital ingredients: love for one another and discipline. The great thing about that combination is that you don’t have to worry about discipline if you have love. If the players really care about each other—not just for show but with a genuine love that is pure and giving—they will play their roles properly.
Chris Creighton, the head football coach at Drake University in Iowa, has always been one of my favorites. When he was still a young coach at Wabash College, he came up with the idea of asking coaches who had won a national championship what was the most important characteristic of their championship teams.
When he asked me that question, I thought about it a long time, and the word that popped into my mind was unselfishness. Every championship team I’ve been with has been unselfish. Guys weren’t worried about their rushing stats, or how many tackles, interceptions, or catches they’d made, or how many points they’d scored. They were concerned primarily about the team. And because we had teams full of unselfish people, we were able to accomplish extraordinary things together.
My personal experience confirms Doc Spurgeon’s point about the importance of love. If we have love, how can we be selfish? We can’t. I believe that unselfishness is the number one quality exhibited by all great teams.
How does unselfishness work itself out in your business, your family, or your church? Spiritually speaking, people who are part of a church are part of a body of believers. How many times have you heard of someone making bad decisions that reflected poorly on their church or other Christians? That person has failed to see how interconnected he or she is to the whole body.
If you work for a business, are you more concerned about yourself or about the entire group? Do you care about the committee, the event being planned, your department, your individual goals, and the position you’re striving for, or can you look at the entire company in an unselfish way? This takes us back to the definition of success we discussed in chapter 2, on the Block O of Life. If we really desire success, if we want the inner satisfaction and peace that come from knowing we did all we could for the group, then we’ll begin looking at the teams we’re part of in a healthy way.
This is absolutely one of the most difficult things to do in today’s society. We are fragmented and individualistic. Our personal computers and iPods and TV screens isolate us in our own little worlds. In our churches, we can put up blinders and be more concerned about our congregation’s particular distinctives than about the needs of the church down the street. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking that “we’re” right and “they’re” wrong about some practice or point of theology and forget that we’re all part of the same team.
Look at the Block O as it relates to the fundamental of Team. In the Spiritual/Moral area, are you doing things on your own, in your own strength, or are you part of a larger group, supporting and being supported? In your personal and family life, are you doing what you can for the team, keeping others in mind? Go to the bottom of the Block O and evaluate your health. Are you keeping yourself fit so that you can do a good job of loving your family? I know that I do a better job of coaching when I’m healthier, when I’m well-rested, when I avoid putting things in my body that I shouldn’t. That’s a motivation to eat well, exercise, and keep myself in shape—not just for myself but for the good of everyone around me.
Relating Your Goals to the Team
If your career goal is to make a million dollars, that’s fine. Some of our guys will list that on their goal sheets. That’s not a bad goal. The question is, What are you going to do with that money when you reach your goal? Are you planning to benefit all of society, or are you thinking only about making money for yourself? Do you really believe that having lots of money and the things money can buy will make you happy?
Doc Spurgeon says that 99 percent of the people who say they love someone or something say it because that person or thing gives them pleasure. But the true measure of our love for someone or something is how much we give back to the object of our love. What are we contributing to our families, our churches, our jobs? Are we giving back to God?
Everyone who wins says, “Thank you, God. I love you.” You see it after games or when people are being interviewed about winning the lottery. What they’re saying is, “This gives me pleasure.” Or maybe they’re thinking, We won the championship, so now I’ll get a new contract, or I scored a touchdown. Thank you, God. Maybe now I’ll get drafted in the first round.
True success, however, comes from working in the opposite direction. True success is achieved when our main concern is the good of others and the building up of the team. That’s why I don’t mind passing along principles I’ve learned from other coaches. When Lou Holtz was coaching for South Carolina, he saw a copy of the Winners Manual we give to our players at Ohio State and asked if he could use it with his players. When Mike DeBord coached for Central Michigan a few years ago, he also asked for a copy. I teased him and said, “Now, this is for your use only—not for any other Michigan teams.” Two years later, when he became the offensive coordinator at the University of Michigan, I said to him, “You’re not going to use this stuff against me now, are you?”
Putting the Team First
It’s human nature to be competitive and territorial. In a company, people can become so focused on their own success that they celebrate when someone in another department fails. Competition inside a company for goals and dreams isn’t a negative thing; it can motivate employees to work harder. But when they get so focused on themselves and fail to work for the good of the team, everyone loses. Even minor victories will be hollow.
We’re all human, and we all want to feel good about ourselves. That’s why, when someone else doesn’t do well, in a perverse way it can make us feel better about ourselves. That’s an immature way of thinking, but it’s a reality. I believe that God knows our frailty and that he wants us to recognize that foolish, selfish thinking and discard it. We have to repent of it.
We have to work on our team skills every day, because we’re never entirely squared away in anything we do; growth is always a process, no matter who we are. People who say they don’t have petty thoughts occasionally are either far better than anyone I’ve ever met, or they’re not being honest.
The nicest thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.
Margaret Carty
Chris Gamble was a great wide receiver. His passion and dream were to play that position in the NFL. But in 2002, we were pretty solid at wide receiver—with guys like Michael Jenkins, an eventual first-round pick by the Atlanta Falcons; Bam Childress, who now plays for the Eagles; Drew Carter, currently an Oakland Raider; and Chris Vance—but we had a lot of injuries on defense. One of our defensive backs, Richard McNutt, had injured his ankle during his senior year in high school, and the surgery hadn’t gone well. He was basically running bone on bone and playing through the pain. He had such a passion to help the team, and he was a fierce competitor, but he was taking so much medication for the pain that he began to have stomach problems. When the doctors finally said he couldn’t play, it left us pretty thin at defensive back. In order to help the team in any way he could, Richard became a student coach, and he’s now a defensive-backs coach for the Cleveland Browns.
In practice, our receivers and cornerbacks work against each other. For fun, we’ll sometimes flip them around and have the defensive backs run the routes and the wideouts try to cover them. When we did that, Chris Gamble was always the best cover guy. He was phenomenal. So after the third game with Richard hurting, I told our defensive coaches that when the ball was in the red zone (inside our 20 yard line) and the other team was getting close to scoring, they could utilize Chris as a cornerback and let him match up man-to-man. They wouldn’t have to teach him anything about the defensive scheme, just let him go on his competitive instincts.
In one of those early games, against Cincinnati, Chris had an interception in the end zone that helped us continue our winning streak. As the season advanced and our record climbed to 7-0, we were still struggling in the defensive backfield. I talked to Chris and told him that we really needed his help at cornerback. His response was always the same: “I’m straight.”
You don’t get the breaks unless you play with the team instead of against it.
Lou Gehrig
I told the defensive coaches, “When the ball crosses the 50, you can have Chris.”
By the time we were scheduled to play conference rival Penn State, we were 10-0, one of the top-ranked teams in the nation, and closing in on a possible Big Ten championship. I told the defense they could have Chris for the whole game, and they decided to start him against Penn State.
“Chris, you okay with that?” I asked.
“I’m straight,” he said.
In the final four games of the season, Chris averaged 125 plays per game. He not only played cornerback on defense and wideout on offense, but he also returned punts and kickoffs for our special teams. It took some real tenacity and fortitude for him to play that many downs.
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is a process; working together is success.
Henry Ford
Before the Michigan game, Chris was featured by a local news channel in a spoof of his workhorse performances. In the piece, he was shown as a sideline reporter, public address announcer, and drum major in the marching band. He sold concessions and tickets and wore the costume of Brutus, the Buckeye mascot. The feature ended with Chris sweeping up the stands after the game—and as he’s working, the maintenance supervisor comes by, flips him the keys, and says, “Chris, can you lock up when you’re done?” It was priceless.
We ended the season undefeated and prepared to play the Fiesta Bowl, that year’s BCS national-championship game, against the University of Miami. Chris is from Miami, so he was looking forward to it, but I could tell he was a little tired from the season.
In the championship game, he was assigned to defend the Hurricanes’ Andre Johnson, the best receiver in the country. The defensive guys said, “Wherever Andre Johnson lines up, you’ve got him, Chris.”
To start the game, we called an offensive formation that didn’t include Chris. We were trying to scale back a little bit and not use him on every play. But Chris was so excited about playing both offense and defense in the championship game against his hometown team that he went out anyway, and we ended up being penalized on the very first play of the game for having twelve men on the field.
“Chris, what are you doing?” I said, when he came off the field.
He just gave me a sheepish look and said, “I’m straight.”
After that rocky start, Chris played a fabulous game. He stayed on Andre Johnson the entire night, and on offense he caught a sixty-yard pass. When it was over, Ohio State had won its first national championship in thirty-four years.
The next year, Chris was ready to play both sides of the ball the whole season, but because we had such a strong receiving corps, I told him I wanted him to play defense full-time and that we’d work him in part-time on the offensive side, which was not his dream.
“You all right with that?”
He thought about it a moment. “I’m straight.”
Chris had a spectacular year on defense and attracted the attention of the NFL scouts. As the draft approached, he was projected as a first-round pick and was selected twenty-eighth overall by the Carolina Panthers, and all because he’d been willing to do whatever the team needed.
If he could have written his own script, he would have chosen to be a receiver, and he would have been a good one. But for the good of the team, he went over to the defensive side and then realized that though he could be a good receiver in the NFL, he could be a great cornerback. The moral of Chris’s story is that if you do what the team needs and let your dreams and desires be shaped as you give to and support others, things will work out well for the team and for you. Chris is now entering his fifth year as a starter for the Panthers.
You Must Be Willing to Listen
Relationship coach Susan M. Campbell has said, “Teamwork is a constant balancing act between self-interest and group interest.” We all have self-interest, and there will always be some players who have a hard time buying into the team concept—they’re in it for themselves. If the majority of players care about the team, they can model that for the ones who don’t quite get it. But if the majority are continuously self-obsessed, we will wind up with nothing but chaos.
Either we’re pulling together or we’re pulling apart. There’s really no in-between.
Kobi Yamada
One truth I’ve embraced in life is that you can influence people who will listen. And if you’re open to being influenced, you can influence others. Sometimes we lack that openness in the Christian community. We don’t want to hear other opinions. We say, “Don’t talk to me about anything other than what I believe is true.” Well, if that’s your attitude, you’re probably not going to be able to talk to the people you want to reach. If we could get past the issue of our differences and simply listen to each other, we’d be more likely to move forward. If people find us open and receptive, they’re apt to say, “He’s a nice person; I think I’d like to get to know him more. I’m going to see what makes him tick.”
Being part of a team means that you have to be willing to listen if you’re ever going to be heard. I think that’s very important.
Believing in the importance of the team was truly illustrated during the 2003 season at Ohio State. Coming off the 2002 national-championship season with a large class of returning seniors, we had high expectations as a team.
As it turned out, we had fourteen players selected in the 2004 NFL draft, the most ever from one school since the NFL adopted its present seven-round format. But despite all the talent on our team, we lost two tough ball games during the regular season, and our dreams of repeating as BCS champions didn’t materialize.
You might think that when our team goals were no longer within reach, the players’ individual agendas would come to the forefront, especially with the bright futures that lay ahead for some of them. Instead, just the opposite happened. The 2003 seniors, which included Will Smith (currently with the New Orleans Saints), Darrion Scott (Minnesota Vikings), Ben Hartsock (Atlanta Falcons) and Michael Jenkins (also with Atlanta), committed themselves totally to the team. They pledged that they were not leaving Ohio State without a victory in the 2004 Fiesta Bowl against a Kansas State team that had just soundly defeated top-ranked Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game.
Because our guys put the team first, they were able to pull together and finish the season on an up note, defeating Kansas State 35-28.
Questions for Reflection
1. Have you ever experienced the chaos that results when the members of a team are self-absorbed rather than selfless? Looking back, is there anything you would do differently?
2. Think of a time when you saw teamwork achieve something great. What did you notice?
3. Chris Gamble saw his dream change because he participated in teamwork. Have you ever seen that principle at work in your own life?
There is no delight in owning anything unshared.
Seneca
4. What is the larger goal of your team’s success? In other words, how is what you’re striving for about something bigger than yourself?
Your Personal Game Plan
1. Personal/Family: How can you better exhibit the fundamentals of TEAM in your personal/family life?
2. Spiritual/Moral: Have you been a “team player” with others in your spiritual life? What specific thing can you do to improve in this area?
A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.
Proverbs 17:17
3. Caring/Giving: Is there someone on your team that you can reach out to today?
4. Health/Fitness: What can you do today to care for your body and thus become a better team member?
5. Your Team: What can you do today that will make you a better member of your team?
6. Academics/Career: Have you noticed someone who has exhibited unselfish teamwork? Write that person a thank-you note.