The RGIII Experience
What Baylor Blog would be complete without a reference to Robert Griffin? So here goes.
The RGIII saga at Baylor has been a truly fascinating one. I came to Baylor last year having heard of RGIII but having never witnessed his play. Over the course of the season, I got to watch him put together a spectacular football season capped by the Heisman Trophy, which is given to the top collegiate football player in all of college football. That means that out of the 124 teams that field a team in Division I college football, RGIII was the best.
The football part of this story is great, to be sure. But that’s not my point of focus in this story. Griffin handles himself in a manner that is simply less and less seen as our country moves forward. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find people who let both insults and success roll off their backs quite like the elite leaders. He never seems to lose his confidence, nor does he let his ego overwhelm him.
Robert Griffin has long since left Baylor University. I have no doubts that he will support the school as he goes forward in his NFL career through endowments and donations, but the imprint he has left behind is truly special. He has continued to strive on a daily basis and put in hours and hours of hard work in spite of the temptations that athletics can bring.
Many people credit his outstanding character and work ethic to his parents, both of whom have a military background. This, in my opinion, is the true game-changer. More and more children are born outside of two-parent households. And Yahoo! recently posted an article referencing a person’s ability to make it to the middle-class of America. This article was based on a study performed by the Brookings Institution which stated that, among other factors, a driving piece of a child’s successful arrival into the middle class comes from the success of parents before them. The prevalence of single-parent households can leave a gap in childrearing when it comes to income, life lessons, or both (though there certainly are exceptions to this rule), and while this certainly doesn’t doom the child, it can certainly make the child’s path to success much more difficult.
I look at the success of Robert Griffin’s parents and think about how I could possibly be that kind of a parent one day down the road. I certainly can’t control the parenting or life habits of others, but I certainly can take the steps now to decide what kind of parent I eventually want to be, so that when the time comes, I’ll be a man capable of raising my son or daughter to be strong, intelligent, and wise. Success will likely stem from that.
In his book, “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, author John C Maxwell says that, “Champions don’t become champions in the ring – they are merely recognized there. If you want to see where someone developed into a champion, look at his daily routine.” This can be applied to all areas of life, including activities, like parenting, that are not competitions. The road itself is long, but the potential rewards are great, as we’ve only begun to witness with RGIII.